Lollipops
by 30CK
Summary: Someone is leaving confectionary treats on his desk while he uses the toilet. Notes are left in a foreign language that he cannot identify. His memories are missing. They're connected somehow, and Artemis Fowl will find out how. Post-EC, non-OD-compliant.
1. Chapter 1

Lollipops!

by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

* * *

I. Realization

* * *

Artemis Fowl the Second blinked. There was what looked suspiciously like a lollipop sitting innocently on his desk.

Something fluttered in the back of his mind – a brush of a memory in his subconscious – but it passed as quickly as it had come without him being even aware of it.

He grabbed a nearby towel and dried his hands before he spoke into his handheld radio.

"Butler." His gaze did not waver from the confection.

"Yes, Artemis?" his manservant replied instantly.

"Can you come up to my room for a moment?"

"Yes, Artemis."

Mere moments later, the door to his room opened without a sound – Butler had, true to form, re-greased and oiled every door hinge in the mansion to ensure silence – and there stood the towering figure of the bodyguard of the Fowl family. Artemis knew he shouldn't be, but he was always mildly impressed with the way that he never heard the giant of a man ascending the stairs or walking to his door. The man knew how to be quieter than a whisper. And that could be vital.

Butler came in with caution, as per his training, but Artemis was keen to notice that his firearm was absent from his grip. He must have already assessed the situation from just outside the door and decided that an immediate threat was not present, and thus, no reason for a gun.

"Artemis?" His beetle-black eyes swept over his charge, then scanned the room, stopping at each window and looking at them as well. The sky was dark; it was almost eleven.

"I assure you, there is nothing of risk to me in the room, Butler. I called you," the boy interrupted, sensing that the question 'then why did you call for me?' was about to leave his servant's lips, "merely to…verify something for me."

Butler remained expressionless and immobile, waiting for his instructions.

"There appears to be a lollipop on my desk." He almost gagged at the way he moved his lips and rolled his tongue when he said the word 'lollipop'. He would have to make sure not to say the word again.

The Eurasian man's eyebrow jutted up at that. "You hate lollipops."

There was that tug again, of something he knew once, before it dissipated once again.

"I do believe that I am quite aware of what foods I like and dislike, Butler," he said frostily. "I did not purchase the…candy for myself. Point in fact, I did not purchase that candy at all."

Artemis hated most candy simply on principle, most candy being too childish and juvenile for his taste.

Butler walked over to the desk indicated and frowned when he saw that there was, in fact, a lollipop resting on the surface. This situation was getting to be weird.

"Well?" Artemis questioned impatiently.

Butler nodded. Now…how to say the next sentence professionally? "There's a lollipop on your desk." Dammit.

Artemis frowned, and spoke aloud, "that removes the conclusion that I was merely hallucinating. Then that means the – _it – _is really there."

Butler just nodded. He didn't really know what would come out of his mouth if he opened it.

"Butler." His attention snapped back to his charge. "That thing was not on my desk before I went to use the bathroom a moment ago. When I came out, intent on claiming a towel from the extra stack I keep by the door, it was." His blue eyes bore into Butler's black.

Butler furrowed his brow, positively scowling. That meant that, in the approximate three minutes and forty-something seconds that it took Artemis to relieve himself and wash up…it was impossible. No one could get through every single one of his security measures without setting one off. And if any one was set off, Butler knew about it.

There was the proximity alarm one hundred meters outside of the main gate, and then another one hundred meters outside the main doors of the estate. There were cameras scanning every inch of space on the outside, and every room inside. There was a few extra alarms fixed up in the wine cellar – Artemis said he had a reason for it, but he seemed to doubt himself when he said that, and could give no further valid explanation. Butler just brushed it off as paranoia, a perfectly alright thing to have when you're in one of the richest families in the Eastern Hemisphere. And the Western Hemisphere.

"So, one minute, it wasn't there, and the next, it was."

"It wasn't exactly one minute, but the point stands, yes. That is correct."

"Have you touched it?" he spoke sharply.

"Yes, Butler, I decided to touch something that, by all means, _magically_ appeared in my room while I was occupied in the restroom," he said sarcastically, layering some ice into his voice. He glared at his manservant. "I am not stupid, Butler. I have not touched it."

"Good." Butler stood over the desk, eyes sweeping over the confectionary treat. Artemis stood a foot behind him, watching as his man-servant fulfilled his job requirements – a professional, taking over the situation as such.

Yet again, he remembered something, from what felt like forever ago – yet he did not remember it. After all, nothing had happened.

Butler's beetle-black eyes stared hard at the candy, the desk, and the entirety of the back wall, digesting the information and attempting to form conclusions from such.

It certainly looked like a normal lollipop. Poisoned, perhaps? But if the perpetrator knew enough to slip into this room undetected, he – or she – should have enough information about their target to know that Artemis absolutely detested lollipops; even if they didn't know that fact, a well-informed assassin would not use sweets in the first place, given Artemis' personality. A fine example of English literature, maybe, a few bars of gold, certainly – though not before several extensive tests to satisfy his paranoia; but certainly not candy. And if someone was trying to kill the boy genius, why not just slip into the bathroom and kill him there? No, trying to kill the boy didn't make sense.

He picked it up. It weighed as much as a lollipop of its size should weigh. The stick was the normal pressed paper used, the candy swirled and colored like the rainbow, reds and yellows and blues mixing around the spiral.

Just a normal lollipop.

A small piece of paper was tied to the stick. He took a moment to look at the ragged piece of twine that was used; it was tied in a simple square knot – indicated that the person who tied it on was not just a run-of-the-day civilian, whose only experience with knots was with tying their shoes. They had at least rudimentary knowledge of knots, and generally, that went hand-in-hand with either working on construction or other occupations much like it, or working on a ship. Or someone who was in Cub Scouts at any point in their life. Either way, there was nothing particularly telling that he could derive from the knotted twine.

He turned his attention to the paper. There was something written on it, but he ignored that for exactly one-half of a second while he instead inspected the paper. It was nothing special; just simple notebook paper, could be bought at any writing supplies store on the street. It had been ripped into a smaller size in order to fit it onto the stick; a whole sheet of paper would have been awkward, and folding it into a small size would have been extra work. As such, the paper was crumpled slightly in the corners. If he was better, he may have been able to determine the approximate size of the fingers or fist that had done the job. He mentally shrugged. Nothing he could do about that right now.

His eyes slid to the sentence printed on the small sheet.

* * *

Captain Holly Short stepped down the ramp of the shuttle, the visor already down on her LEP regulation-issued helmet. She really didn't want to deal with the populace right now, with their incessant badgering – as infrequent as it was these days. Normally, an LEP uniform got you swamped by Havenites. But not Holly; not as of late. No, these days, she was one of Haven's most popular officers. Rumor was, people were rooting for her to get promoted to major. The rumor had its positives, such as keeping annoyances a fair distance away out of respect for her possible accomplishment. The negatives, though…

She shook her head.

She didn't need a promotion any more than she needed to talk to someone right now. Right now, she just wanted to get home so she could take a shower and go to sleep; she was exhausted. And she wasn't even really sure why.

But, naturally, since she didn't want to talk to somebody, someone eventually had to call her name, wanting to talk to her.

"Holly?"

Well, at least it was a friend.

She sighed, raising the shield from in front of her eyes and turning to look at the face of Foaly the Centaur. "Yes, Foaly?" she asked, attempting to sound civil. She assumed her attempt failed, given the raised eyebrow that came of it.

"Where'd you go?"

"Had to perform the Ritual," Holly said easily. It wasn't a lie, after all.

But Foaly's eyebrow remained raised. If anything, it arched higher.

"That's all?"

"Of course it is," she replied.

Foaly stared at her for another moment before grunting – or was it a whinny? – and clopping back into his booth. Holly sighed, frustrated, but followed him all the same.

"I don't think I believe you, Holly," the centaur opened with as he seated himself in his specially-designed chair. His fingers flew over the keyboard in front of him, filling the room with a _click-clack_ pattern. "In case you didn't notice, each helmet happens to have a tracking device attached. We got rid of the wrist-bracelet trackers after your first incident with the Mud Boy." No explanation was needed on who 'Mud Boy' referred to. "Though I'm sure you noticed that." He glanced back at her. "The signal broadcasting from your helmet told me that you spent about twenty minutes at your chosen site." He cleared his throat, and swiveled around so his whole body was facing her instead of just his head. "At site fifty-seven."

"And if it was?" Holly replied evenly. So what if she picked that site to complete the Ritual? It was as good as any of the other sixty-something sites left. Better than most, actually.

"The site," Foaly continued as if he had not heard her, "that you were originally kidnapped at. By the Mud Boy." He sighed. "Holly, you have got to stop agonizing about the fact that we mind-wiped them. I agree with you in the fact that he was just turning into a nice little human, as were the others, but it was what we had to do. And the fact that you use _that particular_ site to reclaim your powers…it worries me. And it would worry Julius if he knew."

Holly didn't say anything.

"I had originally wanted to grab you and congratulate you for how well you've been doing on your missions as of late, eat some carrots, have a laugh before parting ways for a while. I would have left you to your business and not even bothered you about Fifty-seven," the genius said with a nod in her direction. "But then I noticed that your tracking device was disconnected just before you left your site. As was your video feed. And audio." His eyes stared into Holly's. "I couldn't find you until you ended up at Shuttle Point ninety-three, boarding the shuttle to ride back to Haven." He cleared his throat once more. "So wherever you went, you didn't want anyone to know you were going there. And as far as I can tell, there's only one place like that."

Holly mumbled something.

"Say what?"

"I said 'I had to give him something'." No explanation was needed on who 'him' was.

"He didn't see you, did he?"

"No, he didn't, Foaly. Neither did Butler. And all the cameras have been marked, including the ones they've put up in the last six months, and were pointed out very clearly on my display, so it was easy to avoid them."

Foaly 'hmmed' to himself. His hand opened a drawer and drew out a carrot, allowing him to chew on it while in thought.

"It isn't something that would trigger a total recall?"

Holly snorted. "Foaly, the only thing that would convince Artemis Fowl the Second that fairies exist, worked with him for a good year-and-a-half of his life, and are responsible for his mother being healthy, his father being alive, his bodyguard seeming considerably older than he appears, and his bodyguard's sister joining a United States wrestling team instead of being a severely unsatisfied but extremely quirky bodyguard, is Artemis Fowl the Second himself. I'm pretty sure that I'm in the clear."

The centaur finished off his carrot with a contented smack of his lips. He nodded. "True." He titled his head to the side for a moment, thinking again, before he looked back at her. "Why?"

Holly knew the full question without him asking it: 'why did you have to give him something? And why now, when you're doing so well for yourself? And what is it?'

She smiled to herself and shrugged.

"Because…"

* * *

_You've been a good boy._

Artemis groaned, putting his head into his hands. The clock on the wall stated that it was past three in the morning.

'_You've been a good boy'_ was the message that had been attached to the lollipop.

What did that _mean_? He'd 'been a good boy'? And for being such a thing, he gets a _lollipop_? That was absolutely one of the last things he would want as a reward, ranking right up there with public displays of affection, a birthday party, and a trip to Disney Land.

Artemis frowned, his brow furrowing.

And why did it sound familiar? _'You've been a good boy.'_ He felt like he'd heard something like that before.

When had he been a _good boy_, anyway? Sure, he supposed he hadn't been as cruel with his criminal activities as of late. He had been forging famous pieces of art, mostly. For some reason, he had been more attracted to works of the fanciful, ones that he'd never taken much notice of before; things like Richard Dadd's _The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke_, William Etty's _The Fairy of the Fountain,_ and the Irishman Francis Danby's _The Wood-Nymph's Hymn to the Rising Sun. _It was fascinating what some people would pay for such frivolous and uncultured works, some even more than the most famous DaVinci's or Monet's.

Some would say that sticking almost exclusively to forgery was good behavior, in comparison with his past behavior. Point in fact, _he_ would say that that was good behavior, in comparison with his past behavior. So it could be possible that whoever left him this was merely pleased with the way he was turning out.

Although who such a person could be remained unknown.

It seemed logical that whoever left it was watching him closely, _very_ closely, had invested a distinct _personal_ interest in him and his going-ons. That also meant that they would have to be watching him close enough to _know _of his slightly-less-than-legal going ons, which was a matter of concern.

There were only two things he could even possibly _begin_ to connect to such a person: this lollipop, and, just maybe, mirrored contact lenses.

About half a year ago, he had discovered what appeared to be contact lenses in his eyes, with no memory of how they got there. Closer inspection had revealed them to have a clear, but reflective metal over where the pupil would be. It was a bit like wearing mirrored sunglasses, he supposed. Butler and Juliet had them as well. They had no memory of them either. Butler had taken them to a source he had in Limerick. Butler returned with news that, apparently, Butler himself had requested that they be made, even giving specific instructions on the composition of the lenses – with such detail given, Artemis could only conclude that he himself had relayed the information to Butler, who then told the source. Artemis had no memory of doing such a thing.

Apparently, the contacts had fallen out of their eyes because the material they were made of had oxidized and corroded, which in turn kept them from sticking to their eyes. If he had had them custom made, then he would have known that they would have fallen out after a short time, which meant that he had put them in just before they served whatever purpose that they were supposed to serve. But what purpose could mirrored contacts serve?

He had stopped actively thinking about them a few months ago, but now…now he had two things he could not explain. One was from himself, which he could not even remember, and the other from some mysterious persona. Perhaps the mirrored lenses were _because_, or somehow otherwise connected to the mysterious good-will-sender.

_You've been a good boy._

And those strange symbols that followed the note! He felt like he knew them. Like how he knew Egyptian hieroglyphics, they seemed familiar, but he just couldn't place a word on them. The first was a square shape, with six small lines jutting out of each of its four sides. That was followed by an arrow, then a dot. After that was a spiral; three arms, spinning up and right, down and left. Then the square again, a messy triangle with circles on each point, a tear-drop shape, and a hexagon with lines inside the shape connecting the points together, crossing over each other in the center. It all ended with another dot.

He _knew_ he'd seen those glyphs before. He'd fed them into his computer, he'd looked for matches among other languages. He'd manually searched the internet for something close to them. Manually! Honestly, he was acting so unlike his usual self, it was disconcerting.

He stared down at the paper once more – the lollipop sat to the side, out of the way.

The handwriting was definitely effeminate. Eighty-five…eighty-sex percent sure that whoever wrote it was female. They had taken their time, evident from the even, elegant strokes – which also leaned towards a female writer. Probably right handed, given the lack of the telltale smear of ink across the paper – created when the writer's hand rubs against freshly-inked words or letters. There wasn't any strong emotion being felt at the moment of writing the note: if they were angry, the letters would be grooved into the paper because of holding the pen hard against the paper, or the handwriting would be jerky and smeared. If they were sad or otherwise upset, the writing would be shaky, and there would be pauses every few letters, or after every word. But each word smoothly connected to the other, effortlessly joining the strokes of the pen.

The symbols were the only thing that didn't match. They were quick, precise, practiced. Like they had been done a thousand times before, and had become styled to their own handwriting. Like a signature.

He groaned again.

Even if he figured it was a woman's signature, it didn't help if he _couldn't read it!_

Almost growling, Artemis pushed himself away from his desk. He couldn't remember a point in his life where he'd been more frustrated, not even as a child.

Of course, it seemed that some points in his life were missing from his memory, so that claim now held a lot less weight than it originally seemed.

Artemis was always one who prided himself on his intellect, on being able to remember and analyze and reason out almost anything. It was what he was good at; it was what he _did_. And to have the knowledge that he didn't have all of his knowledge, that something that he knew had been taken from him – forcibly or otherwise – was absolutely maddening.

But he knew – he just _knew_ – that the lollipop, the note attached to it, those symbols, the mirrored contacts, the fact that he had some sort of amnesia, the fact that Juliet and Butler had the same sort of memory loss…they were connected somehow. How, he didn't know. But they were definitely connected.

Artemis stood up from his chair. He needed to think. He needed someplace quiet. He looked around the room, noting the whirring of the computer most of all.

Someplace quiet_er_.

He left his room.

* * *

Holly stepped out of her shower, pink and pruney, wrapping a towel around her lithe form. Not bothering to towel-dry her hair – it was short enough that it didn't stay wet for long, easily dried by the warm air of her apartment – she walked out of the bathroom and through the door that led to her room.

Small, simple, and so very _her_, Holly's room wasn't the most interesting of sights. There were only a few items that stood out against the background of books, photos, awards, and nicknacks; predictably, a great number of those items could somehow be traced back to one Artemis Fowl. The Second, of course.

Nothing big, just small things; a slightly worn brown iris cam (the very same one that Artemis had used during their adventure against Jon Spiro), a white chess piece (the very first one he had captured when she played him for the first time; probably for the last time, too), and a small, plastic, hollowed-out sphere (she had kept an acorn and a bit of dirt in there when they faced the Bwa' Kell and Opal Koboi; Artemis had been forced to use it when her finger was cut clean off). Her old Neutrino (and the model before that one, and the one before that one) also sat proudly on top of her dresser, scarred and battered, but still managing to shine.

They weren't much, but they always made her smile.

Her smile grew wider as she thought of the boy genius. She glanced over at the clock; almost four o'clock. Artemis was probably still up, agonizing over the note, going over hundreds of possibilities as to what it could mean, and who it was from, and _why did they leave it?_ She knew it was cruel in a way: Mud Boy wasn't going to sleep for days, until he'd went through every logical conclusion that his overinflated brain could come up with and eliminated every single one.

Holly's grin slipped off her lips at that thought – she would never be one of those conclusions. Because he didn't even know she existed. And he, getting into his human teenage years now, wasn't likely to ever consider magical creatures as a probability ever again.

She sighed. D'arvit.

Life was hard enough for her already, without a mud boy hovering at the forefront of her thoughts. She didn't need Mud Men clamoring for attention in her mind when everything she had should be on her duty as an officer of the Lower Elements Police.

She flopped on her bed and compromised with heart and head: duty out there, Mud Men in here. Duty when she was _on duty_, Mud Boy – Mud _Man, _soon – whenever else she felt like it. Like now, for instance.

Holly groaned as she stretched out across her lumpy mattress, her thoughts on a pale little billionaire and a certain candy store sweet. Her lips twitched. Artemis certainly didn't remember it anymore, but she certainly did. It was during their first encounter, when she had been kidnapped by the little brat.

She had just gotten her magic back, the LEP was sending a troll into the manor, and she was suiting up in full LEP gear (courtesy of the black ops team that Butler had incapacitated at the time). She had turned to him, grinned impishly (or is it elvishly?), and punched him; it was probably the first time he'd ever been punched. She was preparing to make like a dwarf and blow, what with a troll getting hand-delivered to the manor's front door and all, but not before making sure to send Fowl a cheeky grin and tell him to stay put. The boy had immediately opened his mouth – most likely for some witty retort – only for nothing to come out. She had only grinned wider, and felt that she had to say something else before she left.

So she had said, _"That's right, Mud Boy. Playtime's over. Time for the professionals to take over. If you're a good boy, I'll buy you a lollipop when I come back."_

His face changed from confusion and shock to indignation and frustration the moment the word 'lollipop' left her lips. And after she had started up her wings and shot into the air, ears perked up and equipment running hot, she heard the great Artemis Fowl the Second say with a whine, _"I don't like lollipops."_

As of late, Artemis had indeed been a 'good boy', as she had so eloquently put it. With that deal came the lollipop. He deserved it, after all.

* * *

Artemis Fowl the Second came out of his 'meditation room' at around six o'clock in the morning with a tape recorder in his hand. Anyone who knew Artemis knew that when he needed to plan something out or otherwise think especially hard on one thing, he went into the room and spoke out loud in a continuous stream of thought until he reached any amount of conclusions. One also knew that when he finished these sessions, he tended to walk out tired and hungry, but overall very satisfied with himself.

Such was not the case now. Not completely, anyway – tired, yes, hungry, absolutely, but he was in no way pleased with his progress. Or, to be more precise, his distinct lack of progress. He had been in there for two hours – _two hours_ – and he was barely any further than he had been when he had went in.

Oh yes, he had made a few conclusions…but none of them concrete or revealing enough for him to do anything about. After all, there was nothing very concrete or revealing about memory loss.

Parts of his memory had somehow been manually erased; if it had been an accident and he was suffering from amnesia, Butler would have known about it and asked him about it. If it was amnesia due to an infection, parasite, or other anomaly in his brain, there would have been other symptoms which he or – if he managed to miss them – Butler would have taken notice of. But he still had no idea about how or _why_ such a thing would be done, how especially. The technology required to delete memory was not unavailable to the public, but that was concentrated electrical pulses into the brain that wiped a whole life from them, not a few select moments. The technology needed to pinpoint memories and erase only those simply did not exist; he had invested a small amount into that particular project three years ago, and still he had no results.

Memory lost was proven to be a very delicate thing, and regaining them was usually a long and slow process. Unlike what movies and television showed time after time, one did not get their memory back in one enormous, climactic wave from a single stimulus. The mind was fragile, and that type of memory rush would be more likely to shut it down than reboot it. If memory was to be regained, if it could, if it was possible for the person in question, than it would be regained slowly, healing and remembering from small stimuli of all kinds; bits and pieces of a larger puzzle falling into place over months, years of time in order to complete a picture of a fully-healed mind.

The working stimuli could be anything, too: a sound or a smell, or any number of things seen, from the majestic and nostalgic sight of the rising moon to the familiar setting of putting a sugar cube into a cup of tea.

It was possible that he had just not received the correct jumble of stimuli needed to trigger a recall yet; he was not sure how long it had been since he'd lost his memories, after all. General estimation put it just over 6 months ago, anywhere between a few hours and a week before those mirrored contacts fell out of his eyes, but there was no way to pin it down to an exact time and date. One would think that, after six months, the chances of recall are slim to none, but there was still the fact that a stimulus had to be _just right_ in order to trigger a lost memory; it wasn't that the stimulus had to be a perfect match to the original event in the memory, but something, somehow, had to align, had to _fit,_ in order to bring about the recall. The established communities – both medical and psychological – were both still highly theoretical and hesitant in their answers to amnesia. Artemis could hardly claim to be more knowledgeable. Perhaps in a year or two, sure, but not at the moment.

His logical mind knew that the technology to erase specific portions of the human mind was not available to any human on the planet. It hadn't taken much effort to hack into the many militaries of the world, and secret services, and even less effort to hack into private companies' files. There were a number of people and places attempting to create such technology, some that had been for more than twenty years, but none had yet succeeded.

A small part of him, the last vestiges of his childhood, perhaps, spoke up again and reasoned that if the technology was not available to humans, perhaps it was created by something else. Something not human.

The same part had spoken up before, in his meditation room, but he had brushed it off as ridiculous then. Now…something made him stop, stop in the entrance hall with one foot on the stairs. His eyes were unfocused, staring at a suit of armor, dented beyond repair. He blinked and refocused as a thought trickled into his brain. It was…dented? That armor was an antique, and there'd never been a scratch on it before. His father had inherited it from _his_ father, and it had always stood proudly where it was, a touch of the Fowl's vanity in its gleaming surface and a hint of the criminal side's malice in its shining medieval flail.

For just a moment, he saw blood on it.

The image disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving Artemis only more confused.

The small voice resurfaced, hinting at unknown answers, hinting at other things in the world that lay hidden just out of sight. Hidden just out of mind.

He had a giant of a mystery on his hands; from past experience, the best way to solve a mystery was to start with what you already knew. To start at the beginning.

Artemis Fowl the Second had begun his infamous scheming at just over seven years of age. It had started small, like most things do: art forgery, hacking, minor thievery. Nothing that would result in someone wanting to erase part of his mind, he was quite certain of. It wasn't until his father went missing that he really started descending into the darker side of the law; illegal business transactions, successful heists on five of the biggest banks in Europe, and so on. Not activities befitting of any normal ten-year-old, but, then, Artemis was no normal boy back then. And he certainly wasn't a normal young man now.

If his criminal life coincided with this mind-wipe, then he had to meticulously comb through everything he'd done for the last four years.

In a sudden whirl of activity, Artemis strode quickly up the stairs, two at a time. In short time he was on the third floor, walking purposefully towards the room at the end of the hall. He slipped a key into the door's lock and stepped inside; four glowing computer monitors gave the space a soft and steady source of light. He ignored all of them, instead choosing to go one of two paintings hung upon the far wall. He unhooked it from the wall and set it on the floor with an audible _thump_ before laying it face down – he didn't particularly like his great-great grandfather's self-portrait anyway – and easing the wax paper backing off. Nestled between two of the wooden crossbeams that stretched across the inside lay a small device no larger than his thumb.

He slipped the miniature hard drive from its place and held it loosely in his hand. He quickly stretched the sheet back over the back of the painting and secured it before re-hanging the painting on its proper space.

He sat down at the nearest computer and, with an easy flick of his wrist, plugged in the hard drive. Its standard security measures came up and he typed in the 23-character password, his fingers moving over the surface of the laptop like a pianists' over his piano. As soon as he passed through the security feature, another, one of his own design, popped up and blackened the screen behind it. It held four blank spaces, and it took a moment for Artemis to remember which one was for which purpose.

His eyes lingered in distaste on the final blank for just a moment before he was all business.

A quick tap of keys brought a light at the top of his computer to life – the indication that his microphone was currently active. In clear and clipped tones he said, "Artemis Fowl the Second." The first space was filled with his name as it was spoken, encoded to instead show dashes where each letter sat.

His fingers jumped over the keyboard, typing in his family motto – _Aurum est Potestas_, 'Gold is Power' – and watching as the second space filled with the eighteen dashes.

He opened a left-hand drawer on the desk he was seated at and reached his left hand inside. He tilted his hand up to rest it against the top of the drawer, sliding his thumb into a small notch and pressing it up to a square of plastic that pulsed red. The scanner quickly read his thumbprint and wirelessly sent the information – that it was a perfect match to the sole owner and user of the encrypted hard drive – to the computer in use. The third blank was filled.

Artemis tilted his lips towards the computer microphone once and cleared his throat, prepared to give the final code. It was the last of his security features; for the final password, a series of words had to be spoken in one exact sequence. If the sequence was not exact or if a word got garbled for one or another reason, access would be denied and the hard drive would lock itself for a full month before allowing a second attempt with two additional pre-set security features set up and the old passwords replaced for their alternatives. For the password, he had chosen four words that were ultimately extremely unlikely to be used in tandem, ones that were doubtful to end up together in even the most bizarre of conversations. "Turtle. Gold. Bedtime." He began saying the last word, but the 'L' didn't even fully pass his lips before he closed his mouth sharply as if trying to keep the word from escaping out of his throat. His lips thinned in disgust.

He had no idea _what _he had been thinking when he created this thing.

Artemis Fowl had to force his voice to remain impassive when he tried again, forcing the word out from his throat with only a thin layer of frost in his tone betraying his emotion.

"Lollipops."

He _hated_ lollipops.

And now, for some reason, they were showing up everywhere.

The frown remained pasted across his features as the computer leapt into life, splaying three separate windows and a host of files across its screen. He opened one labeled for just under five years ago and began to peruse its contents with a single-mindedness so concentrated that only seven other people in the world could hope to claim anything like it; two of them being Chessmasters (Artemis had beaten one, and had not yet played the other), one a Buddhist monk, three specialists of martial arts (one of whom Butler knew personally), and the last a fifty-year-old musician out of France.

He would find out what had happened. He was Artemis Fowl the Second, a prodigy the likes the world had never seen before. He could conquer any challenge and beat any opponent. He _would_ beat any opponent.

Even if it was himself.

* * *

This was originally supposed to be a lengthy oneshot, but now I'm at twenty pages and it doesn't look like it's going to stop anytime soon so I decided to split it down into chapters and make it an actual story. It took me a good half-year to write this first chapter, so don't expect this to be a quick-update fic. It's my first step into Fowl fiction, so I hope it does justice. There's another idea in the making involving Fowl and a Death Note, but that one's still far, far away, and I have my doubts that it'll ever actually go anywhere.

I'm sorry if my section on amnesia/memory loss is a little squidgy, but I was in the middle of the ocean without internets when I wrote it. And it sounded well enough, so I let it be. I apologize if I'm way off the mark on it.

I'm kinda iffy on some of the dates and time gaps between books, so I mostly did best-guessing at how long it's been between things; basically, five years since he started looking around on the internets for odd things, including the People, about four years since he lost his father, and three years since he visited Ho Chi Minh and began the events in the first book. And don't whine about how he already should've gone on the trip to steal The Fairy Thief and gotten blowed up by Opal, because I'm ignoring that right now and don't much care about that 'cause this is fanfiction and as such I have unlimited authority to do whatever the heck I want.

~30CK / troutpeoples


	2. Chapter 2

Lollipops!

by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

* * *

II. Backtracking

* * *

"I don't like it when you hover." _Crunch_. "It makes me nervous; whenever you're in one place for too long, things start blowing up and we have to save the world again." _Crunch._

"Shut up, Foaly."

"What! It's _true!_" He popped another carrot into his mouth and bit down. _Crunch_. "In fact, people have started betting on what horrible disaster's gonna happen next. I have the list somewhere if you want to see it." _Crunch._

"No – Foaly…"

"No, it's actually kinda funny, here – gimme a min." _Crunch._

There was a clopping of hooves, some shuffling of papers, and the sound of heavy metal objects hitting the sleek and shining floor.

"Here we go." Foaly swallowed the last bit of carrot, cleared his throat with a low whinny, and began reading. "You know, there are a lot of bets on Opal getting out of her crazyhouse for some strange reason."

"Foaly, you realize I don't care, right?"

"Absolutely," he said with an irritated-sounding huff. "You're just here to bug me about checking up on little Arty for you, see how he's doing over your little _gift_, maybe switch on the camera installed in the bathroom."

"Foaly!" Holly shouted, cheeks instantly blazing. The centaur in question continued on as if his name hadn't just been yelled loud enough to make his special triple-thick flexi-windows shudder.

"And I'm winding you up and ignoring your reactions because I want to make this as long and painful for you as possible." He peered at her from just over the large piece of paper. "Not that I want you to suffer or anything; I just want you to know whose time you're using up with these little errands, and would like a 'thank you, Foaly', 'you're a genius, Foaly', 'here's an extra-large carton of carrots for you, Foaly' every once in a while. Just to show some appreciation, or something." He shrugged his hairy shoulders, and his eyes vanished behind the paper once more.

"Foaly…"

"Another Goblin Rebellion," Foaly said loudly.

"I-"

"Atlantis sinking for _real_."

"What-"

"The three major Dwarf gangs coming together and taking the _entire_ Emergency Hostage Fund."

"Foaly," Holly said, cutting him off before he could cut her off, "what will it take from me to get through this with as little pain as possible?"

Two calculating brown eyes appeared back over the paper and stared at her. Foaly's back leg _clopped_ against the titanium floor as he thought. Finally, he said, "Beetle juice, aged just over one week – no more than two weeks, because then it gives off this weird aftertaste that sticks to the roof of my mouth. Something with the bacteria, maybe."

"Beetle juice, well-aged, check."

"Three cartons of carrots, Mud-man grown."

"Three cartons of slimed-up carrots, check."

"Cheerios."

Holly blinked. "Cheerios?"

Foaly nodded, attempting to hide his eagerness. "Mud-man cereal. Comes in yellow boxes at their local grocery stores – wonderful stuff, especially the honeyed kind."

She looked at him for a moment longer before shrugging and nodding. "Okay, Mud-man cereal, check."

"And some more tin foil." The centaur put a worried hand to the metal cap that served about as much purpose as a toilet to a Dwarf. "I'm running out."

"Paranoid-o-rama tool number fifty-six, check. I'll get a surface visa as soon as I can."

"Excellent," Foaly said happily, tossing the paper to the side and clip-clopping back to his specially-designed swivel seat. He sat and, with a few quick keystrokes, a relatively small window popped up on his wall-to-wall screen. "He's been hiding out in his private computer room for the last few hours."

The camera angle was awkward – not well-placed, it showed Artemis sitting in front of a computer, the screen away from view. He had a large pad of paper sitting on the table to his left and a regal-looking pen on top of that. The image detail was amazing, and even from the distance Holly could see the unnatural crease stuck fast in Artemis' brow; she'd never seen him looking so frustrated before.

He picked up the pen and, without glancing away from the computer screen, wrote a number of sentences into the notebook.

Holly nodded her head at the screen and asked, "Can you get a closer look at what he's writing?" Foaly gave a hairy-shouldered shrug and tapped two keys, and the image magnified immensely. The amount of detail stayed the same, and the words, inked in black, jumped out from the contrast of the slightly-off-white paper. With a few more keystrokes, he flipped the image around so the words were right-side-up. He squinted at it and frowned.

"You know," Foaly said, a bit put-out, "you'd think a genius would have better handwriting than that."

Holly craned her neck and squinted with the centaur. Her eyesight being far better than Foaly's, and more used to unintelligible scribbles, she was only silent for a few seconds before she began to read in broken strings of words.

"Vladimir, Russia… Saga, Kyushu, Japan… Durban, South Africa… Nagano/Yamanashi/Saitama, Honshu, Japan… Kohala, Hawaii… Cairo, Egypt is circled," she told Foaly, "and it has a question mark at the end of it. The other four are crossed out." She looked over at the half-horse just long enough to see a frown pull at his lips before she went back to reading. "The word contact, old friend, and arms dealer are circled. Eighteen thousand dollars, an arrow pointing up, question mark. Air, land, and water – land's crossed out. Oh, he crossed out the whole thing." She descended into mumbles. "Butler…twenty-thousand…Vietnam…Ho Chi Minh…Bangkok…"

"Did you say 'Ho Chi Minh'?"

Holly blinked and looked back at Foaly. He was looking at the screen with a sort of baffled curiosity, so she returned her gaze to Artemis' writings and reread the last bit.

_Butler, contact. Trustworthy?_

_Twenty-thousand US dollars / Fifteen-thousand US dollars._

_Meeting in Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City…__**fits.**_

_Plane, joint flight, Bangkok._

She looked up to Foaly. "Yeah," she told him.

His very-large teeth were worrying his lower lip, and he appeared to be thinking very hard.

"Foaly?" she prodded.

Foaly nibbled on his lip a little more before answering slowly, "It may be nothing, but…"

"This is Fowl, Foaly. Even if it _were_ nothing, I wouldn't believe it was nothing, not with that rotten little brat still alive. What is it?"

"Well…" He began typing, and the light _clacks_ that the keyboard let off seemed to calm him down a little. "Well," he tried again, "every so often, no matter how hard we try, humans and fairies meet. Sometimes they kill each other, sometimes they ask for a wish, sometimes they just go out and get pissed together. As you know, drinking with Mud Men is a no-no from the Book, and we kick them to the curb. We keep records of who we boot out, or who gets lost or something-or-other. And we keep tabs on them after they're left up in the mud; every three to six months, a representative of the fairy people – sometimes LEP, sometimes a councilmember, sometimes one of the gnomes on permanent garbage duty – is sent aboveground to check up on the evicted ones. Depending on their threat level, they can either stay as they are or we have the authorization to send out a hit team to take them out.

"We have one-hundred and thirty-two loosed fairies in Asia, the majority of them scattered among the islands. There's twenty living in China, five in South Korea, eight in North Korea. There are three fairies in Vietnam: an elf, a sprite, and a very miserable dwarf, all of them bathing in mud for more than fifty years now."

"Foaly," Holly said evenly. "Point?"

The centaur gave a very large and completely unconvincing sigh and grumbled about how nobody appreciated a good dramatic delivery. "Three in Vietnam, Holly," he said, "but there's only one fairy registered within the walls of Ho Chi Minh City." He hit a key with pronounced flourish, and a new window opened up.

It was a file. The attached photo showed a tired-looking female sprite with wispy black hair hanging down across her face. Holly stared hard at her for a long moment before shaking her head and saying, "I don't know her."

"I didn't expect you to know her," Foaly replied. "But Artemis Fowl the Second, at one point, might have."

* * *

It was exactly 10:42 am when Artemis pushed himself away from the computer terminal. He swallowed past the suspicious lump in his throat and looked down at the pad of notepaper he had been writing his findings on. His eyes were a whirlwind of confusion and anger, and of the eager thrill of a hunter on the trail of its prey.

Things had started coming apart a little over three years ago. Actions that he had taken, according to what he had written down, had begun making less and less sense to him. He jumped all over the world with little to no rhyme or reason; mysterious business meetings, and business transactions, where the items being discussed or traded failed to be written down; flights to foreign countries that went largely unexplained; loss of equipment, of large sums of money, with no further written accounts given as to what happened to them.

If he thought hard about those times, those times that he did not know about, he discovered that a large portion of those times were just…gone. They were deemed acceptable memories if he didn't focus upon them – his mind passed over them easily, as if it did not matter too much, because the journey did not matter, it was the end result that was cherished, such as retrieving his father from the Russian Mafyia. Artemis knew, when just idly thinking back upon it, that he and Butler had gone to Russia and hidden in the snow, and they had shot Fowl Senior to distract the thugs guarding him, and retrieved him and escaped.

But when he put his famed concentration to those memories, he could not specifically say things with certainty anymore: he did not know how they had gotten to Russia, he did not know how he attained the intelligence that led to his father's location, he did not know how they had remained undetected from the hundred Mafyia grunts patrolling the snowhills around the submarine acting as an exchange-point, he did not know how shooting his father distracted one hundred Mafyia grunts enough to allow he and Butler to extract his father, he did not know how they had escaped from the horde of money-driven killers, he did not know how they left Russia or how they arrived at the Hospital that his father was admitted to…he just _did not __**know.**_

It was going to drive him _insane_ if he remained unable to figure this out.

Artemis took a long breath, and let it out slowly. He forced his hands to unclench from the fists they had been curled into, and eased his mouth into its usual thin-lipped neutrality.

His eyes remained hard as diamonds.

He took another calming breath and his posture relaxed slightly.

Okay…these points that had been forgotten and passed-over were ones that had been erased by the mysterious 'mind-wipe'. Undoubtedly, the parts missing from the entire memory were the ones that directly involved the unknown persons that conducted the mind-wipe; so it was likely that he had, at times, directly met and worked with the unknown persons. They may have also assisted with some personal problems of his, such as rescuing his father.

How would he accomplish such a thing – gaining the loyalty and help of persons unknown? Blackmail? Bribery? It was laughable that they would do it simply because he asked for it, after all.

But his mind was going off on tangents; as he had done before, he would have to start from the beginning if he were to figure out this trespass. The beginning, where everything began to unravel. It wasn't any of the locations that were crossed out; Cairo, Egypt had been the second-to-last entry, but after reading his notes had deemed that he had not found what he was looking for there. That left only one place to go.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

He had written down that Butler had a contact there, and that he, Artemis, was willing to pay the contact up to twenty-thousand American dollars for the information he/she provided; information that was either never received or was now stolen from memory. That meant there was a probability that the information was linked to the unknown persons who had committed the mind-wipe, and was his best option for continuing forward.

Artemis frowned.

How deep, exactly, did this rabbit hole go?

He thumbed a handheld radio and spoke one word into it. "Butler."

"Sir," came the response.

"I require you up in the office."

"Yes, sir."

Thirty-four seconds later, the office doors opened without a sound and a veritable giant of a man stepped through. His eyes flickered across the room, taking in the setting and analyzing for any problems or threats, before resting firmly on his charge.

Artemis turned towards his manservant and gestured to one of the other chairs in the room. "Please, sit."

"I'll stand, sir," Butler replied instantly. A faint smile tugged at Artemis' lips, and he nodded in acquiescence.

"Very well." Artemis straightened up in his chair. "Butler, you recall when I sent you off to Limerick, correct?"

"To ask about the contacts, sir?" Butler clarified.

"Correct."

"Yes, sir, I do."

"I have been perusing my old notes, and I believe that I have discovered several things that can be linked to that." Butler visibly stiffened when the meaning was understood. "Yes," Artemis said in confirmation before Butler could ask the question, "I also believe they are linked to the note found tied to the lo – to the confection, rather, that was discovered on my desk late last night."

"What do you require of me, sir?"

Blue eyes met black, and held them for a long, unwavering moment.

"I need you to dredge up some old contacts of yours," Artemis said, breaking off the contact by blinking freely once more. "Southeast Asia, to be more precise."

"Do I have a name to work with, sir?"

His charge frowned deeply and his brow wrinkled in annoyance and frustration. "No, you do not. For reasons unknown to me, I omitted your contact's name and the reason for why I would meet such a person when I wrote my notes. I can only assume you have a personal list of such men and women that you keep for yourself."

"Yes, sir; do you need to see it? It would take some time to gather all the pieces of it, as the information is spread across four continents and twenty-two different bank vaults, but-"

"No," Artemis cut him off. "It is not necessary for me to view a full list for myself. You have my permission to leave immediately in order to begin tracking your people down."

Butler bowed his head and said, "Yes, sir." When he straightened up again, he met his master's eyes and asked, "What do you wish for me to tell them when I find them, sir?"

"All that should be necessary is my name, and Ho Chi Minh City."

"Vietnam?"

"That is correct. They should know what it is about." Provided that they weren't also subjected to the same mind-wipe that he was.

"Very good, sir." Butler turned on his heel and stepped out the door, only to stop with one hand lingering on the handle. He turned back and looked at his charge, his stern professionalism softening slightly. "I will call Juliet – she'll be here before the end of the day, and will act in my place until I get back."

Artemis hummed in thought and said, "It has been a while since I've last seen her. No doubt Mother will be pleased for it." He gave a short nod. "Very well. I expect you back within two weeks, at the very latest."

"Of course." Butler gave his charge the smallest of smiles. "Don't get into too much danger while I'm gone, Artemis."

"Perish the thought, Butler," he replied. A smile of his own turned the very corners of his lips up for a brief moment as the door closed, and he was left alone once again. His lips dropped, he sighed, and he returned to his work.

* * *

"So why is this sprite chick so important to you?"

"Because _she_ is someone who had taken to drinking spirits with the Mud People; that's something outlawed by the Book itself. So we forced her aboveground, stunted her wings, and let her out into the world. Two months later she settled down in Ho Chi Minh, and didn't move more than five miles in any direction of the city after that. Until three years ago, just after we finished with our first encounter with Fowl." Foaly paused for a long moment, then shook his head and started up again.

"Holly, alcohol - Mud Man alcohol, that is - has an amplified effect on all fairyfolk. We absorb it faster than humans, it hits us harder, and it screws with our magic. One glass of even the weakest of thier drinks sends us spinning so bad that even the most talented of fairies can't handle the Gift of Tongues without puking all over themselves." He raised a hairy finger and Holly, who had opened her mouth impatiently, grudgingly shut it and stared at him expectantly. "Worst of all, though, is its potency for addiction. One drop of the stuff hits your tongue, you're going to want more."

"Is that why we have such a big alcohol industry?" Holly asked curiously.

"Yeah. The People would rather we got drunk off their stuff, on their terms, than go up and drink with Mud Men and get kicked out forever." He shrugged. "It's fair thinking; plus, fairy alcohol is tainted with magic, making it significantly weaker a drink."

"Okay, so muddy spirits are really bad for us. Go on," she urged.

"So this sprite is evicted for partaking in Mud Man alcohol with Mud Men, right? As soon as she got to the surface, she dove for another bottle of the stuff. Reports from the last _fifty years_ she'd been up there all agreed that she was lucky she hadn't dropped dead; fairy magic may help a lot in keeping you guys from being poisoned by alcohol or drugs, but even that has its limits, and by all rights, she'd passed them years ago."

"Lightweight drinker with a liver of pig-iron. That's gotta make things fun."

"And a little shot of magic in the morning takes care of the hangover headache. You fairies have it so good," Foaly whined.

"Focus, Foaly," Holly told him, smiling. "You were ranting about how she should have died from drinking so much."

"Right." The centaur scratched his neck. "Well, as it turns out, she's not dead. Far as I know, she's still up in the land of mud, running around like a stinkworm on sugar." Seeing Holly's raised questioning eyebrow, he explained, "Three years ago, she was in Ho Chi Minh City, in an off-the-beaten-path alley, living off of rice wine and healing warts, boils, and aesthetically displeasing acne. Shortly after we wrapped things up with Fowl for the first time, she flagged down one of her watchers and, lo and behold, was as healthy as a newborn."

Holly frowned, and furrowed her brow in thought. "That's not possible. Even if there were a warlock powerful enough to flush all the alcohol out of her body, she'd no doubt have a failing liver at the least; there's no healing something that's that corrupted – we can't heal tissue that's already dead."

"Of course it's not possible. Even fairyfolk aren't that talented," Foaly agreed. He watched her intently as she thought, her eyes darting back and forth with each idea.

She blinked and straightened and said, "You think Artemis has something to do with it."

"Of course I do," Foaly said blandly. "He goes to Ho Chi Minh, apparently finds what he's looking for, has a copy of the Book that came out of nowhere, and this lone sprite shows up a month later, healthy as can be, asking for another chance with the People?" He scoffed. "It's got Fowl written all over it."

"So you're saying this sprite, living in Vietnam, was where Artemis got his original copy of the Book?"

"Precisely. I don't know what mud-man-magic he performed to heal the sprite, but I think he used that as an opportunity to bribe her. Her copy of the Book in exchange for salvation from her personal hell. I think that that list of locations you read off were previous places he'd visited in search for the People. He chose well; nearly all the places he visited have ties to the People in some way. Here, look." Foaly punched a number of keys and brought up a few different windows on the nearly-wall-wide monitor.

"Vladimir is one of the oldest towns in Russia, and it's well-known to us as a favored aboveground hideout for the Dwarf Brotherhood, despite the chill. Our guy in the Brotherhood has heard rumors that the bossman was born up near there, when his mother was still active in the black market.

"Honshu, Japan has a the Shinano River flowing down from Mount Kobushi, beginning just around Nagano, Yamanashi, and Saitama; it's one of the larger rivers in Japan and is an extraordinarily popular stretch of land and water to spot one of the legendary creatures called Kappa – beings that bear a passing resemblance to some families of water sprites. Saga, Kyushu, Japan is likewise known for being something of a hotspot for Kappa-sightings, with the Chikugo River, the longest one in the Kyushu island, flowing directly through it.

"Kohala, Hawaii is home to the oldest volcano of all the Hawaii islands. At nearly one million years old, the Kohala volcano was old enough to experience the shift in Earth's magnetic fields seven hundred and eighty thousand years ago, a massive event which was directly linked with a sudden change in our magical abilities, and the limitations and restrictions upon them. Because of that link, fairy folk – pixies especially – feel a certain pull to the place, and its relative location, beauty, and unending heat from the still-warm volcano core make it a veritable haven for renegade fairies.

"Cairo, Egypt is in close proximity with the Pyramid of Giza, one of the Mud Peoples' Wonders of the World. The pyramid holds a special significance to the People, dwarves especially; their rock polish helped a great deal in smoothing out the limestone blocks. Cairo itself has always been a point of meeting civilizations, with Greeks, Romans, Muslims, and the People all leaving their own distinct marks upon its architecture and culture. The only failing point for Cairo is its air-pollution problem, something that drives even the most devoted fairies away after just a few hours of time in the city.

"Durban, South Africa is the black sheep in all this; it doesn't have anything to lead someone to the People. It's the busiest port in South Africa, population of 3.5 million, third largest city in the country. I'm sure there's a few fairies stationed there, but there's nothing to attract us there and, thus, nothing to attract Fowl there; I can only guess he had a false lead for this place.

"Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, formerly Saigon. Ho Chi Minh itself is relatively plain; modern, hustle-bustley, crowded sort of place. What's noteworthy is that it stands 340 kilometers from a small town called Ha Tien. Now, Ha Tien has a quote-unqoute 'lake' named Ho Dong, and legend says that fairies dance there when the moon is full. I did some digging, and it turns out that the small village existed far before Saigon showed up, though not officially named as a village back then, and some of our own legends state that fairies cast a protection around the residents of Ha Tien, and that that magic was passed onto residents of what eventually became Saigon, and Ho Chi Minh City. It's not an extraordinarily popular hangout for fairyfolk, but it's busy enough these days that no one would notice a few freaks hanging around the shadier districts.

"If he had gone anywhere else after Vietnam in his search for what-have-you, he would have crossed Ho Chi Minh out, like he had with all the others, and written down his next destination; the only reason he may not have would be because he had grown suspicious or untrusting of the safety of his information."

Holly bit the inside of her cheek as Foaly continued, only to speak up over him a moment later. "Foaly, why wasn't this information wiped out when you swept his house?"

The centaur stopped talking immediately, letting his explanation of why exactly there was no reason the Mud Boy would have grown suspicious of the safety of his little black-business diary trail off mid-sentence. He breathed in and out noisily and let out a whinny of mild irritation. "There's nothing incriminating on the flashdrive, no wording or expressions that even marginally allude to the People. The data charge that I detonated in Arty's network erased any and all mention of fairies, down to the last files that mentioned magic, shields, or even the moon. The great thing about my charge is that, with help from a little magic, it was made to affect all electronic equipment within the predetermined area. That means that all connected computers and hard drives, plus all loosed devices, be they phones – and yes, the charge included possible shorthand words – or those ridiculous palm pilots or stray flash drives or hard drives, would have been entered, searched for any one of a thousand different keywords and, if necessary, destroyed. Mrs. Fowl would have woken up the next day to find out that she didn't have any of the foods that used acorns remaining within her electrical database of recipes, sad as that may be."

"Foaly," Holly said, just a little exasperatingly, "I realize you're a genius, but can you get to the part where what you're saying ties into what I asked? You know how people stop paying attention when you talk too much."

Foaly kicked up his back hoof and muttered something about intelligent conversation before continuing with, "None of the documents on that flash drive were cleaned out because there's nothing in them to link Artemis Fowl to the People. No references to goblins, opal, lasers, gold, tunnels, invisibility, pixies, fairies, p'shog, ka-dalun, dwarves, elves, sprites, demons – nothing, not one word. As far as we were concerned, there was nothing left that would allow a normal person to rediscover our underground society."

"Normal person," Holly repeated.

"Exactly," Foaly agreed, sighing. 'Normal' was never a word used to describe Artemis Fowl. "It's not like we were expecting him to leave a perfectly-legitimate trail for himself without actually mentioning anything incriminating about us. The only way he'll find out about us is if he continues to follow the path he left for himself."

"Which he will."

"Well, that's obvious. We _are_ talking about a Fowl. And since it's the little Fowl junior we're talking about, it's only a matter of time before he meets the People head-on once again."

Both occupants of the Control Booth were silent for a long time. Foaly tapped his back hoof on the sleek tiling uneasily and Holly fidgeted with her uniform; taking off a patch here, putting it back on, taking it off again, fiddling with her zipper and running her hands over the creases trying in vain to make it lay flat.

It was almost five minutes later that Holly voiced the question they were both thinking.

"Are we going to let him?"

Foaly let out a nervous whinny and sat down in his specially-made swivel chair.

"Foaly," Holly said when he didn't answer.

"I don't know," the centaur snapped back. "Maybe – I don't know." He swallowed loudly and his back hoof started tapping against the tiling again.

"He was almost good when we mind-wiped him," Holly reminded him.

"He may _not_ be anywhere near'almost good' by the time he figures things out."

"Foaly," the elf protested, unsure of why or what she was, in the end, protesting for, "you've seen what sort of stuff he's been doing since then; the worst he's done is art forgery, and the most evil thing he has planned for the future is stealing a painting out of a bank in Munich. He's not the horrible, rotten, selfish little demon he used to be, even with his memories of us lost."

"Horrible, rotten? No, it doesn't seem so. Nor is he so 'little' anymore. But selfish? He's still lying and cheating and stealing so he can add to his family's fortune, so I'd say he's still retaining some of his old aspects, however few they may be. And the bad guy always reverts back to his old ways if he gets pushed enough."

"Artemis is _not_ a 'bad guy'," Holly disagreed hotly.

"Perhaps not the enslave-a-race, murder-the-firstborn, kill-the-jews bad guy, but still – if he did continue down this little walk into the past that he has going here, and he did find out about us, then there is no doubt in my mind that he would, at the very least, be after our gold. And when Artemis Fowl wants gold, he's pretty much going to do anything he deems necessary to obtain his share of it. We'd be back in Fowl Manor all over again, only he'd be taller and he'd have a warmer tone of voice when talking to his unfortunate prisoner."

"And even if he _did_ do that, we'd have a significant advantage over him, especially considering he wouldn't remember-"

"_Possibly_ wouldn't remember," Foaly interjected. "We don't know when his memories might kick back in."

"Possibly wouldn't remember," Holly conceded, "the first time we went through it. Plus, we'd have Mulch on our side from the very start, and there's no Cudgeon anymore, so no full-grown bull troll to muck everything up. Since we've spent so much time with him in the last year or two, we have a good idea of how he thinks, so even if he differs from the first time, we'd have a general idea of the next moves he'd make." Seeing the centaur scratch his belly – something he only did when thinking harder than usual – and purse his lips in contemplation, Holly grinned and added, "Besides, wouldn't it be nice to be able to talk to someone who can actually understand all your lectures?"

Foaly looked at her for a full ten seconds before bursting out laughing.

"Alright," he said when he could speak coherently between chuckles, "I admit that – it's been far too long since I've had some intelligent conversation."

Holly smiled.

"Okay, so we don't stop him this instant," Foaly conceded, shaking his head in mirth and unable to keep the small grin off his face. "But he does need to be watched carefully, in case bad things _do_ happen. And knowing how things are when we're around, bad things are _bound_ to happen. And as I am the resident genius, I happen to have excellent ways of keeping watch of arrogant, bothersome little Mud Boys." He arched his back, stretching, before settling back down and popping every joint of every finger on both of his very-hairy hands. "Now, I think it's time we found out just who Arty's little 'contact' is."

* * *

Hm. Seems I lied to myself; I wasn't supposed to be finished with this chapter until I was out in the ocean and unable to post it up here. How unfortunate for you.

(sorry about the beginning; I had just finished writing my last update of The Marauders and I was still in that slightly humorous, ridiculous writing style. I apologize if that detracted from your Artemis Fowl chapter experience)

As for the happenings in this chapter - I was always disappointed that the Sprite never showed back up, or that no one ever went and investigated how the hell Fowl originally got his copy of the Book (Mr. Eoin Colfer threw us a bone for the former, a brief paragraph about her in The Atlantis Complex - I jumped up and squealed at that when I read it). So I decided to use that; well, not really, that's just how it came out to. I'm not really going for much planning here, since my stories seem to blossom faster and turn out better when I stop planning things out and just _write._

If any of my facts (or half-truths) are inaccurate (or sound ridiculous), don't hesitate to inform me of it. I would hate for something so small as a slightly-exaggerated statement to lead to my inevitable downfall.

Anyway, that's that - what I said last chapter, for those of you who were paying attention, now stands for this chapter instead; I'm going out on deployment (go Navy) and shan't be back until the summertime. There may be an update before then, but don't be expectant of one; unless we hit a good port or two, I'll be hanging onto the next few chapters I write until we get back onto American soil to throw it up on our beloved website. Until whenever; ciao.

~30CK / troutpeoples


	3. Chapter 3

Lollipops!

by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

* * *

III. Past Dealings

* * *

Foaly sighed and stretched. Shortly after, he stretched and sighed.

At the current moment, he was waiting. Waiting was not an activity Foaly appreciated or excelled at and, all things considered, he'd rather be asleep. And he would be, if it weren't for a few little problems: one, he had more sim-coffee running through his veins than he did blood – he'd been pushing through too many all-nighters lately, and the caffeine was more necessity than pleasure at this point; two, his spider-search was due to finish up any moment now and he'd much rather be awake to see the results before they got swept away to a data-pile; three, he was in the middle of flipping through the thousands of hours of camera – both mud-man and fairy – footage from the Fowl residence, and the longer he kept his eyes open and trained on the monitors, the more he watched and the faster he could find what he was looking for; and four, he'd rather eat his own hooves than go and give up on something concerning Artemis Fowl, because even though Foaly something of a skittish colt, he was in no way some pathetic quitter.

He yawned widely and rubbed at his eyes.

Despite the confidence and bravado he had shown in front of Holly during her lunch break, Foaly didn't have anything immediate to go on – no names, no dates, no addresses, nothing so concrete. And it wasn't like there was a that he could go and log on to and find Fowl's contact with a few taps of the keys.

His primary lead was the one that had been uttered by Fowl's proverbial giant of a bodyguard; Butler had said he had a full list of every single one of his contacts, no matter if he'd done business with them one time in his life or three times a week over tea and crumpets, and that it had been divided up – _how_ it was sorted had not been mentioned, whether alphabetization of contact's names, frequency of meetings, geographical location of the last meeting, time since the last meeting, or what have you – and spread across twenty-two different banks in four different countries.

All Foaly had to do was get hold of the complete list and feed it into his database, where it would spit out their information based on certain parameters, such as dates or general locations of their publicly-known transactions.

His secondary lead was Butler himself.

While Butler the bodyguard, the manservant, the trained killer, was definitely a mystery that would remain largely unsolved, his aliases were considerably more public. It was unnerving how Foaly knew everything about his aliases, yet he could not even discover Butler's full name. By all accounts, Butler hardly existed.

General Colonel Xavier Lee, Jonas E. Lowrie, Alexander Westerfeld, and other assorted identities, however, were very different stories. Foaly had detailed accounts of every one of them, from where they'd gone to school all the way down to where they were supposedly born, and what their favorite foods were. And although he could claim that he knew everything there was to know about Butler's other identities, there were several more aliases that the mountainous mud-man had probably only used once before casting aside, and another few that sat forever on the backburners in case of emergency. There was no way for any human Agency to track all of those trashed and unused identities down; with their resources, it was impossible.

Happily for Foaly, he was not part of any human Agency – no matter if he sometimes used their technology or not – and thus was not bound by such restrictions of 'impossibility'. As such, it had been a somewhat-simple matter of taking the pictures off of Butler's, Xavier Lee's, and a handful of others' identification cards and passports, scanning them onto his computer, and chucking the images into his database.

Then with a few simple taps of his fingers, the photographs had been cross-examined and compared, and any artificial additives were quickly removed – such as slight appearance-modifications, extra hair growth, and the like – in order to provide a true image of the original subject. With a cheery jingle sound, that final image had been sent off to search for matches, both in the computer memory banks and, working in junction with several commandeered satellites, in real-time using the large majority of cameras – ones hooked up to the internet or otherwise sending and receiving wireless signals – that populated the surface of the world. After that, it would be a simple matter of leafing through the footage and seeing if there was anything damning from Vietnam; and if that failed, he could use it to back up the primary lead by seeing what banks Butler went to, and what exactly was hidden in their vaults.

With that search commenced, Foaly had then moved on to his secondary task of discovering more about Fowl's fairy-related beginnings; how he got in contact with his informants, what he could have done to be taken seriously by the masses, how long ago it was that he'd started searching and so on, mainly, but it was also another venue of finding out their identities, because if the information had been sent over the internet, he could track it and find them.

Foaly was a big fan of the humans' internet. Especially because, as of late, downloading sites were highly-valued by young mud men and exceedingly popular, and although the majority of downloadable content was music or pornography, there were also some of his favorite soaps available in high-quality. Another plus for the internet was that it was quickly becoming the humans' greatest source of information, and was the easiest and fastest way to discover such information. Wikipedia, an encyclopedia-type site that had sprung up about a year ago, was becoming one of the most-visited sites on the web and quickly growing in size as more and more people added their 'entries' to the site's 'pages' – even if eight percent of the total information was biased, misleading, or just plain wrong; but, then, the humans didn't know everything that the People did, and could not be completely faulted for their ignorance.

Other popular pages were 'help' sites; like the wanted/help pages in newspapers around the globe, one person posted an ad, including a point of contact, and any number of people responded through that venue, be it through the postage system, the internet, phone, or face-to-face contact.

Other ways of enlisting assistance was any number of out-of-the-way forums or chat rooms, or one of the social networking systems that had been popping up lately such as Myspace; you could talk to your friends instantaneously, and ask for help with whatever you wished by posting a question on their profile page. And of course, there was always the old-fashioned email; but with the social sites and the texting applications recently added to cell-phone services, things like phone calls, 'snail-mail', and even emails were becoming less and less used.

The most logical way for Artemis Fowl to gain information on fairies, the most logical way for him to recruit someone to aid him in his search for them, was to use the internet, whether it was a website that he'd posted his ridiculous query for information or his own personally-created webpage designed for the singular purpose of finding someone that would help. What Foaly had to do was find that post, or that page, and extrapolate from that: how much Fowl had known of them before going around the world in search, when he had initially presented it, who had responded.

For a normal human being, this would have been an exercise in futility; it was impossible to navigate through the vastness of the internet and find something that small and insignificant in comparison. The technology just wasn't available to them yet.

Of course, Foaly was far, far better than some normal human being, and he was years ahead of anything the mud men had even started _dreaming_ of; at the very least, ten years ahead, and at most…well, not to brag, but with some of his most advanced equipment, he was going on one-hundred and twenty-two years ahead of any mud man's barbaric technology.

One of his 'very least' was something he called a spider-search. It was a specially-designed program that took advantage of the internet and all of its annoyingly frustrating 'search' capabilities. It worked under the idea of search engines, and utilizing them to spread a metaphorical web across the internet. As it was, there are hundreds of mainstream search engines, from Google all the way through the alphabet to Yahoo. However, there were also a further million of sub-search engines, ones that were located within websites – for example, the search engine for Amazon, and Ebay, used to find something inside that particular site. Those sub-search engines could connect to other sites for further results, and could bring to the surface thousands upon millions of sites that the mainstream search engines would never have touched – which could also theoretically connect to other sites with other links to more sites, and so on and so forth.

The result would be, if the right keywords were searched for, a wealth of information that the majority of people may have never seen. It only helped that his little program went and searched _everything_, every site and word and file posted on the world wide web; it didn't matter if it had been deleted and wiped from the system or site or page or not, because everything left an imprint, a ghost of its former contents, a dead copy behind after the main information was removed. Foaly, in all his genius, was probably the only one for at least the next twenty years who could find and 'resurrect' that information. It was not particularly difficult, not with the technology he had at his fingertips, but it always made him whinny in amusement and satisfaction when he accessed the dead data and it gave off a small chiming noise. He liked the chiming noise.

So it was that Foaly had gone to a mainstream search engine and begun typing his search phrase. At first, he was ready to plug in 'Artemis Fowl' as the main keyword, but after a few seconds of thought he had dismissed the option; the Fowls were a well-known criminal family. Anything that had the Fowl name attached to it would undoubtedly be pursued by a vast amount of people, from the poor to the wealthy, and the underground shadows to the pesky government-employed lackeys. For something as sensitive as fairy-hunting, Artemis wouldn't have posted anything to bring direct attention to himself; his family, its reputation and wealth, would take too big a blow if he had done that, and retaining that reputation had been one of the most important things to the boy genius at that time. So no, there was no chance that Fowl would throw his name so carelessly up on the internet. Doing so would have been akin to throwing a raw, bleeding chunk of meat into shark-infested waters.

As a likely substitute, Foaly had typed in 'Irish businessman'; the word 'businessman' was both professional and pompous, all the things Artemis had been at the age of ten, and it was a word that would have quickly gained attention at first glance; things like 'genius', 'doctor', and 'researcher', while all true, did not wield the same status of importance. And Foaly included the 'Irish' bit for two reasons: one, that Artemis was born and raised in Ireland, and was as proud of that heritage as he was of his own infallible intellect; and two, because Artemis, as said, was professional and pompous and had an enormous ego at age twelve, and he would have had the undeniable urge to separate himself from other such businessmen, to distance himself, however slightly, from the common dregs of society.

After bringing up the live-feed of Artemis' study and double-checking the word usage of Artemis' journal entry, Foaly had typed in 'paid in US dollars', then paused and added 'large amount'. He had worried his bottom lip for just a moment before finishing with 'information – fairy, pixie, leprechaun'. The three most well-known English words for one of the fairyfolk. If Artemis wanted to find one of the People, he would have used at least one of those terms; perhaps all of them, possibly more from different languages, but one of those three was a definite.

With his words chosen, Foaly had clicked 'search', and his second dig for information had gone underway.

That had been a few hours ago; since then, Foaly had enjoyed a very healthy centaur lunch and choked down a few dozen cups of lukewarm sim-coffee to keep him going. And he had stretched…and sighed.

After his system was once again bolstered by massive quantities of caffeine, he had started going over the Fowlcam video files to try and see if anything Fowl had said or did at any point in time would give him some clue as to what he was plotting or, at the very least, planning – basically the same thing but without the malicious intent that was involved in the former.

The largest problem was that, without Holly, he was unable to decipher the boy genius' handwriting, and he just _knew_ that he was missing out on a lot of potential information because of it. So he was stuck to focusing solely on his spoken interactions with Butler, and the occasional sentence muttered under his breath.

A smirk worked its way onto Foaly's lips; he'd never seen Artemis so out-of-sorts before, and it only served to tickle his righteously-acting-up funny bone to see the aboveground genius talking to himself in fits of frustration.

A smaller but still significant problem was that Foaly only had a limited amount of cameras in Fowl Manor; at least, a limited amount of cameras that actually allowed him any opportunity to glean any necessary information. Foaly's personal cameras were few and scarcely-placed – one in Fowl's computer room, one at the front door, two in his bedroom, and one in the room that Holly had been originally held in. The rest of his cover came from the Fowl Manor cameras themselves; even if they were Artemis Fowl's security system, they were still man-made, and still vulnerable to Foaly's patented brand of mad hacker skills. There were at least fifty, but they were all _security _cameras – watching over the grounds, the halls, a few of the rooms, the basement, and so on and so forth. Nothing interest, nothing _useful…_

…except, perhaps, one camera in particular, focused upon a painting. To be precise, a five-centimeter wide box-framed water-based portrait of Artemis Fowl the First, set into the wall on near-perfectly-silent hinges and hiding not one but _two_ safes with the stern visage of the infamous billionaire. One of those safes, the one in the clichéd Mud-Man spot – the wall – held human currency. An impressive amount though it was – somewhere around fifteen thousand American dollars – it was chump change for the Fowl family, and was of no importance to Foaly. Hell, he could go and print off that much counterfeit cash within an hour, and it would be done so perfectly that no agency in the world would be able to point it out as fake.

The other safe was the important one. It was set into the painting itself, lined with lead and near-impossible to break on account of an extra hidden measure of security in junction with the standard three-tumbler combination: a whisper lock. A tiny keyhole, nigh-invisible to the naked eye and pretty much only noticeable by someone with an exceptionally-heightened sense of touch.

Someone like a dwarf.

It was the safe that Artemis had originally held his own personal copy of the Book in. The one that, if Foaly's hunch was correct – and, like Fowl, they had a nasty habit of being so – had been lifted off the unlucky sprite in Ho Chi Minh City three years ago.

Foaly looked hard at the painting, and his brain froze in place.

He couldn't remember what had _happened _to Artemis' copy of the Book.

He'd watched Mulch Diggums retrieve it from the safe, through Fowl's cameras and through Mulch's iris-cam…he'd watched through the same iris-cam as Mulch spoke to Holly briefly on his way down to the wine cellar and showed her the copy…she'd done the whole gasping-in-realization thing…then they'd parted ways, with Holly going off to find the stolen LEP gear and cause chaos and mayhem all around and Mulch tunneling out and _pretending _to die, the rotten, smelly, surprisingly-clever convict…

…and then what?

Foaly collapsed back down onto his specially-designed swivel chair as that last addendum hit him.

Then what?

Well, one would normally suspect that Mulch had somehow kept the copy this entire time, except for the slight problem of Mulch presently being in prison and tied up by miles of red tape, courtesy of some seemingly invalidated warrants due to screwed-up dates of their execution. Foaly had a sneaking suspicion that a certain meddling Mud Boy was behind it. And with Mulch being in prison and all, he was allowed nothing on his person besides prison clothes, a steel mouth ring if he tried to take a bite out of someone, standard jail handcuffs or manacles, and one small personal item; the rules on the personal item were pretty strict, too – no rings or timekeeping devices, nothing that had a point, from knives to human ballpoint pens, no books or magazines or posters, no bracelets unless they were made of plastic or paper, no personal belonging larger than twelve centimeters in height and a weight of less than one kilogram. Really, the only thing a prisoner could get away with was a necklace. And that's exactly what Mulch had taken to prison – a necklace, made of a bit of string and a small gold coin of sentimental significance to both Holly and Artemis. And that was _all_ he had taken to prison, aside from his obnoxious attitude…and smell.

So where would the reprobate have stashed Fowl's copy of the Book? For that matter, would he have even _stashed_ it anywhere? At the time of their first encounter with Fowl, Mulch really wasn't all that concerned with the People or with Fowl or with the problems between the two. It was entirely possible that he would have ditched it while he was tunneling underground, or when he was living the high life in Los Angeles, or at any point in between or after. It was of no use or interest to Mulch, at least at that time. But now…

Well. Foaly would have gladly handed all the gold in the Hostage Relief Fund over to the convict in a heartbeat if it meant getting his hands on Fowl's copy of the Book. That thing was likely to have all sorts of notes on it – observations of certain meanings, questions and attempts at clarification, sentences jotted down where the Mud Boy would have been trying to decipher a certain line, things that he felt could be changed, flaws and loopholes, paragraphs that would have helped him in their initial encounter and plans for use in the future. Wonderful, disturbing, fascinating insights into the genius' mind and how he had originally viewed fairies and how he had thought and plotted and schemed when he was still a whelp.

It would really help to _know_ how a fairy-friendless Artemis Fowl thought, because that's what the People would be up against whenever the genius followed his memories and his clues back to them; because right now, they were just left guessing.

Foaly absentmindedly scratched his stomach as he yanked his train of thought away from Artemis and planted it back on Mulch. He needed to have a talk with the convict. Dwarves were notorious for their long-term memories, despite their abysmal intelligence, especially the memories of things of significant value; things they'd found; things they'd stolen. Foaly needed – well, okay, not _needed_, but he really, really wanted – to find out where that copy of the Book was, and to do that, he needed to pay a visit to the Deeps Maximum Security Prison. It was three times more secure than Howler's Peak, ten times more impenetrable, and – to steal a little something from Mud Man literature – well over thirty-thousand leagues under the sea. It sat in the heart of Atlantis, and if the People that inhabited it didn't want you there, you weren't going to get in.

Foaly just hoped that they were in a good mood.

* * *

Holly yawned.

She, like Foaly, was feeling the lack of sleep catching up to her. She'd gotten in from her assignment around midnight the previous night, and although her shift at the LEP hadn't started until 8 o'clock that morning instead of the usual 6 – the smallest of gifts to account for long-term, late-night recon missions – she hadn't gotten more than three hours of sleep under her belt. Part of it was due to her staying up to get interrogated by Foaly, followed by an hour of pleasant, less-invasive chit-chat, but mostly it was due to the whirlwind of thoughts that had been flying around her mind the entire time; no matter how much she'd tried she hadn't been able to quiet the chaos, and her thoughts had kept her up until close to four o'clock that morning when the exhaustion finally caught up to her and she passed out.

Her thoughts were easy enough to figure out, if you happened to know the feisty fairy very well; they involved three people, one fledgling Mud Man in particular, and her combating feelings regarding the entire situation.

So she'd been up most of the night, tossing and turning and _thinking_. Holly Short was not an unintelligent female fairy, not by a long shot, but she was not what one would call a scholar; she was a _doer_, not a thinker. She thought best on the fly, in the midst of a firefight or disaster where a plan was needed immediately before somebody died. Spending hours in one place and just thinking obsessively about one issue was not one of her strong points. She didn't try to think about it; she didn't even really want to. What she had really, truly wanted was to just go to _sleep – _but for the life of her, her conscious, subconscious, and proverbial hurricane of thoughts just wouldn't let her rest.

She was of two minds on the decision of whether or not to aid Artemis – or at least, not hinder him – in his journey down memory-lane. Because the bare truth was that if he continued searching, he would end up rediscovering the People through whatever methods he had used that had led to the original contact in the first place.

She wasn't sure how she felt about that.

Well, that's not entirely true; she was pretty sure about how she felt about that, but the problem was that how she felt directly conflicted with how she _should_ feel about that.

She _shouldn't_ want Artemis to regain his memories; she _shouldn't _want him to find out about the People again; she _shouldn't_ want there to be another global crisis so she'd have an excuse to see him again; she _shouldn't_ want to be able to talk with him, to exchange light barbs and sarcastic comments; she _shouldn't_ want to sit through one of his smarter-than-thou lectures just for an opportunity to hear him in his natural habitat; she _shouldn't _want to see him grow up into a man, or see him become a better person because of what they'd gone through before his mind-wipe. She shouldn't want _any _of that – but she found herself thinking fondly on the possibility of just that.

She was an officer of the Lower Elements Police; she was trained to distance herself from her emotions in order to keep from making bad decisions based on silly, irrational personal feelings. There had been a two-week course devoted entirely to that objective, and it had gone into detailed scenarios in order to prepare the recruits for such an occurrence; scenarios such as if a colleague was being held hostage by a wanted fugitive, or if you were to endanger a civilian in a conflict and were forced to make a split-second decision, or if you had to choose between the safety of a human or a fairy, and the like. Holly failed that course three times before passing, and even that was just barely.

Her training told her that Artemis Fowl should be forced to halt his investigations immediately. Protocol told her that the possibly-disastrous nature of his backtracking meant that his actions should have already been reported to her immediate superior and the Council in order to allow them to assess the situation properly and make a decision from there. That was their job; her job was to distance herself from whatever feelings she had about the situation and make a military decision.

She'd never been that great with military decisions.

She cared far too much for that; because Holly Short was an elf, and a female, and she was one of those great people who would never stop caring, never stop trying to protect her friends, and never stop trying to save everyone she could.

Holly snorted sardonically.

Here she was, seated at her desk, _supposed_ to be writing up her full report on the reconnaissance mission she had just gotten back from, and instead she was yawning and reminiscing and _thinking_ again; she'd thought enough that morning to fill her quota for the next couple of months and _then_ some. She didn't need to spend her work time mulling about the Mud Boy, too.

She picked up a file and flipped through it, looking distractedly at the smoothness of her handwriting on the entries within.

Besides, even after all that thinking she _still_ didn't know what she actually truly thought about everything. She didn't know what she'd end up doing, whether she'd give in and help Artemis out or force him away for the good of the People.

The only thing she really knew for sure was that, no matter how much their mind-wipe may have changed Artemis, no matter how bitter and evil he became, no matter what _thing_ he turned into, she would never be able to kill him should the need arise. She was too close to him – her heart was too close to him to be able to do such a thing.

She sighed and closed the folder and slumped in her seat.

She was going to go crazy if this continued for much longer. She knew she had to tell her superiors – or at least _one_ – what she knew and what she was doing, but she _couldn't_.

She'd run into Commander Root when coming back from her lunch break spent with Foaly; she was a few minutes late, and he'd pounced on her just like always, yelling at her in the hallway for five minutes before dragging her into his office and continuing on for another ten. When he'd finally gotten around to asking why, exactly, she was two-point-five minutes late, she didn't have anything to say. She'd apologized for her lateness and told him that it wouldn't happen again – a perfectly military answer – and although she could tell he didn't like it, he had sent her away with a stern warning that late officers did not get promoted to major.

She felt _terrible _about that – about looking her Commander, someone who she trusted with her life, looking him dead in the eye, and just _not telling him_, not telling him _anything_ _at all._

It wasn't like she'd lied, but she felt as guilty and shamed as if she had. She didn't like to lie; it was something she avoided at all costs, and she hated it as much as she hated taking a life in battle. Holly Short was someone who had been raised right, straight and true, and had never run into situations where she felt lying was required; she'd had an overdeveloped sense of honor and duty since she was a child, and that had only grown with her. It was for that reason that, after one disaster or another – such as the Hamburg Incident – she went and straight owned-up to exactly what it was she'd done wrong. She was responsible and willing to take the flak for her mistakes, whatever punishments may be assigned to her.

Unfortunately, this military-style thinking had never covered what she was supposed to do or say when she was sort of aiding and abetting one of the worst criminals the People had ever faced – even if he had technically turned over a new leaf.

And even with him having become almost something of a good guy through all the time that they'd spent gallivanting around, saving the world, that fact – or, rather, that _claim_ – would certainly hold no weight when viewed by the Council. It wouldn't matter how much of an upstanding civilian he'd become in comparison to the cold little brat he'd started as; if they discovered that there was a chance that Artemis Fowl could find them again, they wouldn't hesitate to bio-bomb him out of existence.

The very thought of it made her feel like throwing up.

* * *

Artemis Fowl's mind was unique; quite possibly, it was one of the most unique minds in the history of man. What truly made it unique, however, was not its ability to take in vast amounts of information; it was not its ability to process said information at an incredible rate; it was not the imagination held inside of it, although that was a large part in the long line of his successes; above all, it was his ability to think. Specifically, it was the _way _that he thought.

The average human being can focus solely on one thing at a time, be it through sight or sound, or within confines of their own mind. The average human being, when 'multitasking', is not focusing on a multitude of things at once; but rather, rapidly switching their focus from one thing to another while retaining the information and knowledge from each; or, they are mechanically executing one repetitious-borne action while keeping the larger majority of their focus on something else.

When Artemis Fowl multitasks, he _is_ able to equally split his attentions between a variety of activities. There has been one particular instance when he was six years old, in which, when he was being overburdened by instructors and parents alike, he proceeded to play Beethoven's Sonata _Hammerklavier_ on the family grand piano, read through several chapters of _Grey's Anatomy, _come up with an alternative fuel source that had not yet been discovered, and describe that fuel – and all its details – in Russian, Arabic, and Mandarin, consecutively.

While his body worked through those actions, it was his mind, and his thoughts, that were the important bit. His mind allowed him to carry out each action, and process the information that was taken in; it was his mind that allowed him to take note of everything at once: the expressions of those around him – astounded, proud, indifferent – the sounds of the music and of his voice, the next words that he was to say, the miniscule writing printed on the worn, yellowed pages of the most famous medical textbook in the world, the way his fingers would move, the way his body flowed to and fro across the bench, the postures of the people in the room, the fidgeting of his language instructor who was unimpressed with his skill on the piano, _everything_ went through his mind and was processed and filed accordingly and simultaneously.

He could think of the perfect way to acquire seventy-thousand US dollars from a bank in Germany, and he could think of another way to harness solar energy, and several ways to cease global warming, as well as ponder why he was still attending schooling that was approximately 60 IQ points below his level, all at the same time. It wasn't that his mind thought of each of them at separate instances; rather, his mind broke off and processed each necessary subject on its own, simultaneously.

So it was that, while he was mentally sulking over the annoyingly complex state of his existence, Artemis Fowl was also contemplating the odds of discovering his mysterious possibly-female gift-giver and all that it entailed, typing a newest encrypted entry into his multiple-password-protected journal, humming the beginnings of his newest musical composition, and searching the recesses his mind for more of the memory 'gaps', for lack of a better term. His computer files – encrypted, protected, for no one's eyes but his own – helped with the last problem most of all, what with some of his files detailing his various criminal activities over the years. The process was simple, consisting of reading through those files, concentrating hard on the events in question, and finding whether or not the information and his memories lined up like they were supposed to. If they did not, there was a 'gap'; if that 'gap' could not be logically explained – such as a concussion, poison or drug-inducement, or a variety of other things that could affect the way he remembered things – then he had to attribute it to the force that was behind his and the Butlers' reflective contact lenses, their shared amnesia, the note, and the lollipop.

Although he had quite the collection of them already, the majority he could do little about; they seemed to happen in private places, mostly, with minimal outside contact and, thus, no one he could get in touch with to verify the information with; the only one he logically could do so with was the Vietnam contact, and before he could do that, the contact had to be found – something which Butler was currently working on.

Or, at least, that was how it _had _been. More than twelve hours ago.

Now, he had remembered somebody else; another person he could question.

A man by the name of Jon Spiro.

* * *

You know, the more I write this, the less it becomes a little fluff-ish Holly x Arty story, and the more it turns into an exploration of Everything that Went Unexplained.

(there were a few blanks that I forgot to fill in, that's all)

~ 30CK / troutpeoples


	4. Chapter 4

Lollipops!

by 30CK ~ troutpeoples

* * *

IV. Face Time

* * *

It took Artemis exactly eighteen hours and twenty-two minutes to bribe his way into the Menard Correctional Center of Randolph County, Illinois. An impressive feat though it may have been, in his opinion it was also seventeen-and-a-half hours longer than it had any reason to have taken; the staff of the second-oldest Illinois penitentiary were made of a lot stronger stuff than he had given any thought to. The prison warden, surprisingly, had been especially upright and noble, at least in this avenue, and had outright refused the almost shameless bribery that had been offered him.

A year or two ago, Artemis would not have been above threats and blackmail to achieve his goal; he would have lashed out without care or conscious and completely ruined the man and his reputation, broken him without the barest shred of pity in order to force him into place for his plans.

Now, however – well, as his mysterious note-sender had put it, he had "been a good boy". At some point he could not pinpoint, he had changed. Slight though that change may have been, it was there all the same, and it had made him something of a better person; a _nicer _person, though he was loathe to admit the merest possibility of such a thing.

So he had gone up a position or two in the chain of command and bribed the governor into submission instead. Blessed luck, it hadn't even been that hard of a thing to accomplish. It seemed that things had not been going well at Menard in recent times, including numerous sexual harassment charges on multiple staff members and a recent lawsuit alleging neglect and abuse towards an inmate who had died of hypothermia during the winter holidays; it almost gave Artemis reason to reconsider the blackmail-and-threaten approach, but he withheld the temptation and continued on with his more straight-and-true method. The warden of Menard, Eugene McAdory, was terminated almost too-happily, and the man that had replaced him just this morning, Hinsley, was much more accepting of large sums of money. Hinsley himself had pulled a string or two here and there, and the end result was, _voila_, unasked access.

And so it was that Artemis Fowl and Juliet Butler walked into the Menard Correctional Center looking every bit as if they belonged there. She was clad in a basic tee-and-jeans outfit, for once foregoing more expensive designer brands and flashy merchandise; too much attention was the last thing they needed. For this reason she had also abandoned her since-trademarked ponytail and jade hairpiece, instead wearing her dyed-brown hair down at Artemis' insistence lest she be noticed and recognized. The Jade Princess, a rising star in the wrestling community, was not someone who could be seen visiting an elder gentleman in a maximum-security prison.

So, too, was Artemis similarly dressed. Gone was the double-breasted Armani suit, and gone were the expensive handmade loafers. He was instead decked-out in a pair of blue jeans a size too large for him, a sweatshirt with a hood that he could not fathom a reason for – "It is not even waterproof, Juliet. What is the point of a hood if not to protect your head from the elements?" – and a pair of thoroughly uncomfortable and inexpensive sneakers.

Needless to say, Artemis was less than pleased with the arrangement. But it was always better to play it safe, so safe it would be played.

Juliet was several paces ahead of him, and it was she who spoke to the guards as they passed through security. She was acting as Artemis' guardian and older sibling during their facility visitation, and she of course had all the necessary papers to prove such a claim should one officer or another become too curious; the prison warden though he may have bribed into submission, Artemis was quite aware that despite his family's age-old motto of _Aurum Potestas Est, _money did not solve every pesky problem, and it certainly was not about to be passed around and down the chain of command to the low-level security guards. As far as the gatekeepers were concerned, he and Juliet were just as normal as the line of families behind them – and because of that, they had to obey certain bothersome prison protocols as well.

Artemis tapped a long finger impatiently against his leg. Juliet was standing several feet away, filling out a few sheets of paperwork on a clipboard; he watched her with a bored eye as his thoughts began to fill his head and flicker about.

First, thoughts of his assumed identity; thoughts of the cover stories they had concocted should absolute worsts come to pass; thoughts that, had things not happened as they had recently, he would have been utilizing the identity in question for a much more lucrative and profitable operation.

Then, thoughts of the conversation he would soon be having; thoughts of the information he might uncover, the things that could be revealed; thoughts of what precisely he would have to do in return for said information, depending on its inherent worth – because there was always bargaining that occurred when dealing with people cut from a similar cloth as he. Always agreements to be made and deals to be struck up.

He thought of everything. Of mirrored contacts. Of lollipops and foreign glyphs. Of mysterious journal entries, of Vietnam, and of as-of-yet unexplainable amnesia. Things that had not yet been answered to their fullest and, if his hunch was correct – and they usually were – would remain unanswered for some time, even despite the hopefully-illuminating conversation he was soon to have.

"Alfonse."

His gaze had wandered away with his thoughts, and he focused back on Juliet – or, as she was to be known within the prison walls, Seina – only to see her looking at him. She was holding out the clipboard to him expectantly, so with a curt nod he stepped forward. He took the clipboard and plucked away the pen she'd been twirling between her fingers.

The paperwork had what one would expect a prison visitation record log to have: name, the time you entered, a home address, date of birth, and the like. A space for 'vehicle license number' was filled in with the plates of an old used Ford that he had purchased from a desperate suburb-homeowner that morning for far more than it was worth. It would be disposed of before they flew back to Ireland. The name and registration number of the prisoner they were seeing was filled in as well, and when the guard took back the clipboard and read their completed forms, he raised an eyebrow at them in curious question. But he didn't ask. They showed the man their legal sets of counterfeit ID and although the curious look stayed on his face, he simply nodded at their identification and gave a vague wave at another officer.

He took them to the side and had them empty their pockets into small trays, then walked them through a metal detector. Both passed without issue, their belongings were returned to them, and the guard led them through the set of double-doors that allowed deeper access of the facility.

"The prisoner's already in the Visiting Room," he told them as they walked, "so you won't have to wait for someone to hunt him down for you. He just finished up another visit half an hour ago, and then we got a call – I guess from y'all – that you were gonna be checking up on him real soon as well, so we thought it'd be less of a bother just to leave him in there for the moment. Must say, though, you're a right better-looking folk than most of the guys who come and see him. Here we are," he said, turning and pushing open a side door.

Stepping through the doorway to the Visiting Room, Artemis cast a brief look around; it was a fairly large room with round plastic tables and plastic chairs filling up most of the space. A television set anchored to the wall was playing some news station on low volume, and a clock on the wall read 11:48. There were a few clumps of people here and there – some seated at the tables, some standing by the barred windows, most of them looking tearful and most of them hugging. A table at the back corner had only one person occupying its plethora of surrounding chairs, and it was this person that Artemis was there to see.

The guard nodded. "That'd be him, alright. I'll keep an eye on you guys, and if you need any help with anything, just wave or holler or something. You've got two hours to talk to your hearts' content, starting now," he said, glancing at the clock. "And when you're finished, come grab me so I can escort you out." Then, with another nod and an awkward smile, he turned away to speak to one of his counterparts.

Artemis was in the lead this time, and with Juliet in tow he made his way to the back of the room. At his approach, the man looked up. His brow furrowed. His eyes squinted. And when Artemis reached the little plastic table, recognition bloomed across the man's features.

Artemis took a seat without waiting for a word to leave his lips. Juliet hesitated, just barely, but at his command of "Have a seat, Seina" she placed herself in another one of the plastic chairs as well. He shifted slightly in his own seat in an effort to achieve some amount of comfort before giving it up as a bad job; and then he folded his hands neatly on the table in front of him and looked at the man on the other side and put on his best vampire smile.

"Hello, Jon."

* * *

"He just had to pick that table, didn't he."

"They're criminals, Foaly – of _course_ they're going to pick one of the spots with the least visual coverage."

"Well, why does the Visitor's Room only have one camera? And a _fixed box? _ couldn't afford a pan-tilt-zoom or two? I know the US Corrections budget is in the tank, but it would please me to know what exactly they spent that money on that's so much more important than good security cameras."

"I'm pretty sure no one, save for you, is even remotely concerned that a Visitor's Room has only one fixed-box surveillance camera. Look, Foaly," Holly said, pointing at the screen, "they've got four guards in there right now, five if you count Artemis' escort. The prison staff probably doesn't think it necessary to get more cameras in there."

Foaly ignored her logic petulantly, puffing out his cheeks and sighing loudly. "It's not like they spent their whole budget on _health care _or something useful because even the Mud Men know that _that _category of prison life is especially dismal. Partly due to the overcrowding problem."

"It's not like the inmate violence and surprise shankings ever go on in there," she continued, similarly ignoring Foaly's whining. "There is literally _no reason _for them to bring in more cameras for that one room. And while I can truthfully say that I fully agree with you and that it sucks a giant floppy flobberworm, I'm also going to tell you that the moaning isn't helping anything at all."

"Makes me feel a little better."

"And it makes me want to hurt you," Holly replied, shaking her fist mock-threateningly. Foaly eyed her warily. She smiled at him innocently and continued. "I know how frustrated you can get when you can't play god over everything with wires-"

Foaly snorted and muttered something along the lines of wires being Mud-Man barbarism.

"-but I feel obligated to inform you that when you throw one of your hissy-fits, it's your tech that suffers…well, your tech and your weak, flabby little arms when you beat them and break them, but we'll ignore that. Also, the only targets for your anger here are your creations," she swept a hand around the room "and myself. And since if you try to hit me in any way, I can probably get you arrested in a few shakes of a Dwarf's bum – although I'd probably cripple you just for kicks – I'm pretty certain in saying that you should calm down a little."

His prominent nostrils flared as he let out a breath, and his teeth worried his bottom lip, and he looked at her with just a little bit of fear in his eyes, but the centaur nodded in acquiescence. He looked back at the enormous screen and let out a loud sigh. "Grateful as I am that for all its maximum-security-ness Menard's network is child's play to slip into, it doesn't really help if we can't see them."

"More specifically, if we can't see their lips move," Holly added.

"Even that wouldn't be a problem if I had some of my tech in there," Foaly griped. "I mean, these fixed-boxes are so low-tech that I can hardly even tell what's going on in there in the first place; it's all blurry shapes, no detail or anything. One of my cameras? Even if I couldn't see their lips, expressions tell a lot more than people think, everything from things said to unsaid thoughts to subconscious thoughts; it's all just a matter of how hard you're looking that determines whether or not you catch a glimpse of it.

"And if we're talking ingenious – which we are, because I'm the subject right now-" Holly rolled her eyes "-I've got this lovely little thing, a transmitter; I could have that baby fifty yards away, through concrete walls and electric cables and everything, and I could just filter out all the sounds, frequency by frequency, until it's just their voices. And the audio on some of my new stuff is _phenomenal._ It could pick up a spider scratching in Madagascar."

"Doubt it."

"Hey, don't act like you don't exaggerate," Foaly chided her, waggling a finger.

"I don't." Holly paused. "Not usually." Her eyes flicked back up to the screen. "Not when Fowl's running around, at least."

"True," he admitted, a grin creeping across his lips. "When you say you've head-butted a troll, I can guarantee you that you're the only fairy in the history of forever that would be telling the truth."

"Or stolen back stolen fairy gold?"

"There's probably precedence for that. But I doubt there's any regarding that retaken stolen fairy gold getting re-re-stolen by a dirty little fellow we'd thought dead."

Holly let out a short laugh. Foaly grinned with every one of his teeth and allowed a whinnying chuckle. "We broke into Koboi Labs through a shoddy shit-tube," she said, smiling.

"Helped a Mud-Boy save a Mud-Man, no charge."

"Kicked down the newest Goblin Rebellion at its knees. No charge."

"Brought another Mud-Man back from the dead, no charge."

"Got stolen fairy tech out of muddy hands. Still no charge."

Foaly frowned. "I don't like this trend of 'no charges' we have going on here." He gave an upset sort of sniff and said, "I think we deserve a raise." There was a brief pause, letting the words hang there, before he added, "A really _big _raise."

"Rumors around are saying I'm on a favorites list for Major," Holly said.

"Oh, just drive the screws in deeper why don't you?"

Holly laughed. "Calm down, Foaly. You watch – one day, someday soon, you're going to get out of this civil-service LEPrecon job you've got, you're going to go private, and quick as Dwarf gas you'll be the richest inventor this side of Atlantis."

"I'm not liking this predilection you have for throwing out analogies that center on Dwarf physiology."

"And ever since Opal had her whole episode with Cudgeon and the Goblins," Holly continued as if uninterrupted, "the stock for Koboi Labs-"

"-has crashed and burned, yes. Believe me, I am well aware of how absolutely abysmal Koboi Labs is doing these days. I watch its plummet into failure more religiously than my soaps." He allowed himself a brief cruel-tinged smile before something Holly had mentioned sparked his brain off into another direction. "Speaking of Atlantis, though – you are aware that's where Mulch is being held, right?"

"Of course. Why?"

Foaly was about to continue, but his next sentence was rudely interrupted by a loud pounding noise from the Ops Booth door. He spun around in his specially-designed swivel chair and eyed the door for a few seconds. The pounding noise sounded again, one-two-three knocks before falling silent. If he listened hard he could almost hear a voice yelling something; whatever it was, he was sure that it had something to do with him, given whose Booth door they were pounding away on, and he wasn't really looking forward to whatever whoever had to say.

But even so, he spun around and removed the video feed of Artemis in prison from his monitor, choosing instead to bring up the feed from the multiple security cameras he'd installed all around the Booth. His paranoia had taken a heavy hit when Koboi took control of all his tech during her stint with the Goblins, and he'd rectified that with as much security as he thought was necessary.

Which was quite a lot.

His visitor pounded away on the door – his _locked _door, because it was always locked these days, even when he was inside the Booth because who really knew when some evil nutbag would take a fancy to just strolling on in and electrocute him out of his swivel-chair? – and a moment later, Foaly could see exactly who it was that was doing the pounding.

He groaned.

"Root?" Holly asked.

Foaly just groaned again and heaved himself up out of his seat; he _clip-clopped _towards the door with the practiced air of a martyr.

"Definitely Root," Holly said, suspicion confirmed.

* * *

Menard Correctional Center, it seemed, did not agree with Jon Spiro. Calling him 'thin as a javelin' would have been far too generous now; the prison-issue clothing hung loosely from his skeleton-like frame, and the color – a faded, washed-out blue – clashed sharply against the pallid, sickly tones of his face. His prominent jaw arched out against his skin, stretching the thin, papery flesh out to its limits, and his shadow-encircled eyes were sunk deep into their sockets.

The eyes themselves, though, belayed his pathetic-looking demeanor. They stood out in stark contrast to his drab exterior, bright and focused and aware as a fox on the hunt. The emotion that flashed within them as Artemis strode forward to the little plastic table in the back was almost shocking in its intensity, and it only burned brighter and hotter as the boy genius took a seat in front of him.

By the time Artemis had made himself relatively comfortable and voiced the initial greeting, Jon Spiro was visibly shaking in his chair. His hands were balled tight into fists turning the already-pale skin of his knuckles to a bloodless white. His pronounced jaw was clenched hard, and if one were to listen closely they would be able to make out the dull sound of his teeth grinding together. His posture was straight where it had been slouched moments ago, and he held himself tight, taught, tense like a coiled spring, or a predator only a few agonizing moments away from leaping on its prey.

Artemis was not unaware of the blatantly-negative shift in stance and mannerisms of Spiro once he had taken his seat. He was not, after all, unobservant. Nor was he unaware of the reasons as to why the man would be displaying such overt hostility at his presence; he was not, after all, stupid. He recognized the rapidly-growing anger that built inside the disgraced businessman in front of him for what it was, and knowingly accepted it as deserved and justified.

However, that did not mean he was going to allow that understandable rage to explode directly in front of him and ruin any chances of this face-to-face having any form of success. Jon Spiro was not a man known for his self-restraint, and with hostility building up inside him like carbonation in a bottle it would not be long at all before he lost control of himself.

He had to take control of the situation; avert that anger. Shift the attention off of him and onto the problem, the reason for his visit. Distract him before he dove across the table in an attempt to choke the life out of him.

So Artemis began to speak.

"Before you say anything, I must ask you to be aware that while within the confines of these walls, I go by the name of Alfonse Lee." He unfolded his hands and motioned to Juliet. "Under the same conditions, this is my elder sibling, Seina." He smiled a thin-lipped smile. "Our father, Colonel Xavier Lee, is away on business and unfortunately could not come himself. You see, I am in need of answers that I feel you may possess, Mr. Spiro, and no matter how much more able Xavier may be at getting them than I, I feel that time, more than anything else, is of the essence. I find myself in need of your assistance, Mr. Spiro, and I hope you feel as I do that bygones should simply stay as bygones."

It should not have to be said that Artemis' words were met with silence; a silence filled to the brim with tension, with rage, with styled vengeance. It lasted long and thick and was only broken by the barest of noises from Spiro's side of the table - an expelling of air which could have acted as a precursor to a number of different reactions. It was that noise, that snort, that broke the damn, and it was only several breaths later that Jon Spiro spoke.

His voice was old, cracked, weary, but powerful in ways one would not have expected in an inmate of his age. "'Bygones'?" he repeated. "You have the nerve, _ boy_, to speak – _as –" _A great shuddering breath emptied his lungs and he looked away out the window, face locked in fury.

Artemis could see Juliet out of the corner of his eye; she was tensed. She knew the chances that the older man would choose to attack were high, and she was prepared for it. Prepared to protect her brother's charge. The boy genius may not have been her charge by contract, but he was certainly her responsibility by blood. If Spiro tried anything, made the wrong move, even _looked _like he was prepared to strike, she would deal with him.

Spiro turned back to Artemis and opened the snarl that his mouth had become and-

"Oi!" The three turned as one to see the prison guard, the one that had escorted he and Juliet, ambling towards them. "You alright over here, Spiro?" the man asked, frowning slightly. "Ain't seen you this worked up since those guys from Phonetix payed you a visit. Didn't hear 'em back then, but I kinda figured they were using the entire time for making digs at you." He reached their little plastic table and looked at the three. "Are they giving you trouble already?"

It took several long moments, but slowly, ever so slowly, Spiro relaxed. His hands unfolded, bones cracking as they were moved about, stiff fingers unlocked from the white-knuckled fists they'd been clenched in. His taught and tensed pose vanished and gave way to a more easy but stiff-backed posture. The feral snarl left his lips and thinned out to a neutral line; not a frown, not the smile that he wore like a mask during his old business ventures, just a blank, flat, expressionless line.

To the casual observer, Jon Spiro was relaxed. To Artemis, Jon Spiro was more dangerous now than when he'd been so close to snapping altogether. Even the oldest tiger still had claws.

"No, Officer, they're fine," Spiro said, voice even and controlled. "Perfectly fine."

The guard took a long moment to eye Artemis and Juliet suspiciously. "If you say so," he said dubiously. "Behave yourselves." He rapped his knuckles lightly on the table twice and, with one last look, departed back towards his coworker.

Silence befell the table once again. Jon Spiro looked at Artemis, and Artemis looked at Jon Spiro. Their faces betrayed no emotion, and no words were said. Save for the background noises of the room behind them, a full minute passed in total silence before it was broken. Artemis tapped his finger against the table and spoke, "I find it rather rude, Jon-"

"It's rude, _Arty,"_ Spiro interrupted – not smoothly, not like a blade or a wave of water, not like Artemis would interrupt, but hard, bold, intolerant, like a wrecking ball – "to barge in as such and throw your demands around straight off the bat. To ignore the basic formalities that come with meeting a previous business partner. To think yourself so untouchable that you have the _gall-"_ he said harshly, voice dropping down to the feral growl he'd held before, only to pause, sit back, and begin anew: "It's been half a year since I last saw you, Arty, and you've still got all the business savvy of a three-year-old. You really didn't learn anything from me, did you?"

"If I did, I clearly didn't retain it," Artemis replied blandly. "Perhaps whatever it was you taught me wasn't quite as enlightening as you'd like to think it was."

"Or maybe you're not as intelligent as you think you are."

A small smile worked its way across Artemis' pale features. "I know exactly how intelligent I am, Jon. It is for that precise reason that I lie to anyone I speak about it with; it would be difficult, after all, to work with anyone if they were so intimidated."

"It couldn't be that bad. You don't scare me, Arty; you piss me off more than my own father, but you don't scare me in the least." The smile dropped from Artemis' lips as Spiro, again, called him by the nickname his mother used, and Juliet used, and –

"It's Alfonse, Jon, please," he said evenly. "Alfonse Lee. And if you don't mind my asking, what pray tell _does _scare you, Jon?"

"I'm old. I've got nothing left to be scared of," Spiro replied, waving away Artemis' question and frowning. "Alfonse, huh?"

"Correct."

"That would explain things, then." Spiro folded his hands on the table and leaned forward slightly. "I had someone scheduled for today, a visitor, but I really had no clue who they were. Imagine, for a moment, that you have a man requesting to visit you, a prisoner, and that you'd never seen nor heard the name of the man before."

"I suppose you tried to look him up via the internet?"

"It's been down the last few days, and besides, it's not very reliable for deep research. Most sites are blocked from the network."

"Then I would attempt to get another one of the scheduled visitors to do it in my stead."

"As would I, but my last visit was a week-and-a-half ago before today's two. And they allow us only limited phone calls, emergency-only, usually."

"With no way of receiving any reliable information, then-"

"-I would have to let them in to find out who they were," Spiro finished. He unclasped his hands and held out a finger significantly. "I am a curious individual, Artemis-"

"Alfonse."

"-and that insatiable curiosity has never steered me wrong. So I pass off on the visit and who should show up a day later," he continued, spreading both hands and gesturing towards the boy genius, "than the very person that put me behind bars." A laugh rumbled within his chest. "You may be an overconfident brat, _Alfonse_, and you may be too smart for your own good, and you may not have the guts enough to kill a man, but boy – you sure do have balls."

"Unsophisticated though the compliment may be, I thank you for it all the same."

"Good," Spiro said, mirth removed, "because I don't just hand them out like candy. They're earned just like any respect is earned, and you have to work your ass off to come even close to deserving any. You may have a head start on that front, Ar – _Al_, but that doesn't mean you're getting any special favors. I still very much want to teach you a lesson for what you did to me."

"Completely understandable," Artemis replied amicably – even as his entire being perked up in interest. Because Artemis truly _did not know _what he 'did' to Jon Spiro. Not completely.

Spiro frowned slightly and leaned back a little more comfortably into his uncomfortable plastic chair. "You said you needed my assistance," he said without preamble. "What exactly does the great 'Alfonse Lee' need from a disgraced businessman?"

Artemis straightened in his chair, took a breath, and began to speak.

* * *

"You had better have a _very _good reason for this," Root growled, pushing past him and stomping several feet into the Ops Booth. He took no notice of the various screens and didn't even see his erstwhile Captain, who had rolled the ergonomic fairy-specified guest chair to one of the office's many corners in preparation for the appearance of Hurricane Beetroot. The LEP Commander stopped, pivoted, turning his back on the more prominent features of the Booth, and faced his civilian employee. An unlit cigar had managed to appear between his lips during his march in, and his teeth were clenched so tight around it that it was a wonder he hadn't bitten it in half.

"I always have a good reason for the things I do," Foaly replied glibly, sliding the door shut and trotting back across the room. "Despite how many people think I'm insane because of those reasons."

"You wear a tinfoil hat, pony," Root growled back with an air of finality, as if that one point proved the argument. And perhaps it did. "And I'd like to hear your 'good reason' in every _explicit _detail while _I_ try to find reasons not to chuck you out of the LEP on your hindquarters."

It was a widely-known fact that Foaly was very attached to his job. He tended to take pay cuts (or even threats of pay cuts) very personally. A direct threat on his entire job, however, was unheard of. So he proceeded to perform the action best-suited to the situation. He panicked.

"Holly was the first one to actually notice it," he blurted out. Root's face screwed up into one of either confusion or anger. It was difficult to tell which. Whichever expression it was attempting to telegraph didn't truly matter, because Foaly kept talking, the words practically tumbling from his lips. "But he wasn't doing it particularly fast or anything, and Holly figured that interfering could have consequences a lot more dire than if we just stepped back and watched and let things go their course."

"She decided you should just 'step back'? And not warn anyone, not give any notice to the superior authorities?" It seemed Root had decided to stick with anger, as he was quickly turning a strong trademark shade of maroon, and his noxious cigar was becoming more a wad of tobacco than anything as his teeth ground and gnashed furiously. "Thought you'd just sit back and watch and let it happen!"

"We thought it was the best course of action!" Foaly yelped.

"Well then you should be happy to know," Root said lowly, more dangerous than a troll in a tunnel, "that the kid almost _died _because of you two 'sitting and watching'." He turned his head to the side and spat what remained of his cigar onto the spotless silvery floor.

"What?" Foaly asked, unsure if he'd heard right. Artemis Fowl was alive and well in the Illinois prison they'd been viewing almost their entire lunch break. He glanced over Root's shoulder to check one of the smaller monitors – and yes, Fowl was still seated, speaking with Jon Spiro. No one almost dying there. "No, sir-" he began in confused protest.

"Let me tell you, _pony_, that it is not printed anywhere in Short's job description as an LEP Captain – though with what's happened today,_ that might just change - _that she has the authority or competency to make decisions of other peoples' lives based on magma flare activity. She is not your superior, nor is she a coworker in your field. She should have no say in your work, and you should have no legitimate reason to pay her any attention if she ever pretends to."

"Julius, you've-"

"It's _Commander _to you."

"_Commander, _then," Foaly tried again, a little more desperately, "I think it would be best if I say-"

"I think it would be best if you didn't say _d'arving _thing," came the growled interruption once more. "Now let me tell you what is going to happen…"

Holly, from her position in the back of the Ops Booth, watched in concern as Root laid into Foaly in a red-faced, fist-shaking, close-to-exploding sort of anger. She knew from experience that he didn't get like that often, so whatever had happened must have been bad.

Then she distinctly heard Foaly mention her name – and her superior really did explode. Metaphorically speaking. At least she could hear what they were talking about, even if Foaly's high-pitched panicked squeaks were difficult to decipher.

The explosion ended after another few loud sentences – where Root said someone was almost killed? – and he stalked forward until he was right up in the centaur's personal space and proceeded to speak in very low, very threatening sounding tones. Now, Foaly's concept of 'personal space' was fairly large due in part to his paranoia and less-than-normal social contact, and breaching that bubble without any form of permission (and especially with a great deal of hostility) stressed him out just as much or more than budget cuts – and there was only so much stress a high-strung panicky centaur could take.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" he shouted directly in Root's face, backpedalling slightly when he realized the proximity problems of what he'd just done. "Julius – Commander, I don't know what you're talking about, I _swear!_ I've been busy the last day or two so I gave the magma flare responsibilities to the techies in the outside office, and while I know they're supposed to keep me briefed on it I don't think they got around to it for today yet so I wasn't aware of the chute activity and I would never listen to Holly if she tried to tell me anything outside of mission-oriented information and you just misunderstood me!"

The room was silent when he finished his outburst, save for his expanding and contracting chest as he tried to catch his breath.

"Hm," Root sounded, breaking the quiet. His voice was strained, as though he was just barely holding himself back from shouting again. "Is that so."

"Yes," Foaly replied breathlessly. "Sir."

"You don't know anything about Corporal Stile."

"No, sir," he said a little less breathlessly, a little more eagerly.

"He got a scouting mission aboveground. Germany. Tried going through the E24 Chute, almost got nailed by a flare we were never notified of." He shifted his jaw from one side to another, unclenching his teeth as he did so. Calming down. "You didn't know any of this?"

"No, sir – I mean, yes. Sir. I didn't know that," Foaly said a little quickly, still on edge. "Which one's Stile? Is he the fat one?"

"A little husky," Root admitted, "but he's strong. Closest resemblance to our recruiting poster than we've had in a while."

"Except the face. If memory serves, that's a face even a dwarf mother couldn't love."

"All right, that's enough." He ran a hand through his cropped grey hair. "He's fine, by the way. No eyebrows. Got a tan now, without the harmful surface radiation. But he's okay."

"Good."

"Who'd you put in charge of the flares?" he asked abruptly. "I still have to chew someone out for this."

"Carver. The tall one with glasses."

He grunted. "Saw him on the way in. Looked like he was gonna wet himself."

"He probably did. He's even worse with confrontation than I am."

"Good. Get your department back in order, Foaly, or I'll send someone down here to do it for you; and they won't have any respect for your toys."

"They're not _toys_," the centaur grumbled to no one as Root turned around and walked to the door. He didn't go through it, though – he stopped, hand on the doorframe for a few seconds, before he turned back around with a frown on his face.

"Foaly." His voice had dropped back down to serious. "What were you talking about?"

"About what?"

"Before. The start. When I was talking about Stile, and you had no clue."

"Oh. That." Foaly let out a nervous chuckle that came out as more irritating giggle. "It was nothing."

Root stood at the door for another minute, simply looking at the quadrupedal genius with a thoughtful scowl. Then, slowly, he stepped back into the room and closed the door behind him.

Foaly swallowed, nerves flaring up anew.

"You said Short was the first one to notice 'it'. And that 'he' was doing 'it' slowly, so Short thought that you should 'step back' and let 'it' happen." His pauses were sharp and deliberate. "What were you talking about?"

"Um," Foaly said. He tried swallowing again, but his mouth was dry as cotton. He licked his lips and said "Um" again.

"Foaly," Root said seriously. "Explain."

"Commander," the voice of Holly Short called out, preceding her as she stepped out into view near the back wall of the Booth. She looked properly contrite and nervous, and she glanced at Foaly several times before speaking again in what she tried to make a confident sort of tone. "Perhaps…perhaps it would be best if I explained it."

The scowl on Root's face only grew more pronounced. "I doubt that, Short. I very highly doubt that."

Nothing good ever came out of Holly Short explaining things; she only explained things when things were already well on their way to going from 'bad' to 'infinitely worse'. He'd had very personal experiences with it, and they ended up being painful nine times of ten. Whatever she was going to tell him, one thing Julius Root could be sure of was that he was not going to like it.

So she told him.

And he didn't like it.

* * *

"You really don't remember, do you?" His tone was curious, mystified, and completely absent of the anger he'd begun their meeting with.

"Unfortunately, no." Artemis' long-fingered hands lay clasped on the table in front of him. "Nothing specific."

Spiro sat back in his plastic chair with a frown on his face. Not displeased, but thoughtful. "I almost feel insulted. That you have no idea what you did to me," he elaborated when Artemis treated him with a quizzical look. "No old man wants to be forgotten, Arty. Alfonse. The things I've done – the businesses I've dealt, the empires I've created, the media circus of these last six months – all assure me that I've taken my place in the history of the public. That I've made my mark on the world."

"Not all of it was good."

"Good was never my intention," Spiro shot back. "'Good' is for sanctimonious children who've never had to make a life-or-death decision." He was about to continue, an ugly scowl twisting his face, but paused at the pensive look on Artemis'. "Something on your mind?"

It took the boy genius a minute to answer. "I feel like I've heard something similar to that before. By you, perhaps?" His brow was furrowed, and he idly rubbed his temple with his middle and pointer fingers.

"Guts," Spiro supplied after a moment of thought. "Sometimes that's all it takes. And you don't have them."

"I remember that. In the seafood bistro."

"Yeah." Silence. "You know, six months to stew and think, and I've still got no idea how you magicked your way through my security. You had help."

Artemis nodded. "That much is obvious."

"But you don't know who. Or how."

"Or even why. I know I wanted something from you, something you'd stolen from me in that restaurant. Given Spiro Industries' production line, I assume it was a communications device. A computer, perhaps?"

Spiro sputtered and almost shouted incredulously, "You don't even remember – but you're the one who _built _the goddamn thing!"

"What was it?"

"It was everything," he said despondently, hands falling limp to the table. "A computer, a phone, a pda, a music player. It broke through my phone's 500 bit encryption like it wasn't even there. Got into my bank accounts at the same time. It scanned for satellite footprints and picked up, uh, CIA, LEP-"

"LEP?" Artemis interjected, curious. He hadn't heard of that entity before, certainly not one that would be monitoring a man like Jon Spiro, or a Fowl.

"You said it was some Lebanese satellite TV network. Game shows or something. Nothing to worry about." Artemis frowned but said nothing. "It took out the Phonetix security like _that_," he said with an emphatic snap of his fingers, "and gave me their plans, blueprints, designs for the next five years. This thing you made, Arty, it was still a good ten years away for the rest of the world. No idea what ass you pulled it out of, kid, but the C-Cube-"

"'C-Cube'? How quaint," Artemis drawled.

"'The cube that sees everything' you'd said. It used some kind of sensor on the bottom to parse through whatever it was put up against. Did it with my phone, a video tape, computer systems, everything."

"Fascinating. Did you get any idea of how it worked?"

"No. I barely had the thing for forty-eight hours before you and your friends vanished it. Far as I know, it works on fairy dust and unicorn shit."

"I had heard you had a stunning group of scientists at your beck and call at the time. They couldn't figure anything out, even within that timeframe?"

"Bob Pearson headed up my technical staff," Spiro said with a short nod. "Smart guys, the bunch of them – had to be, with the Noble Prizes they had between them – but you did something with that cube. Some sort of code based on a language instead of just plain letters and numbers. Everlasting Code, or something."

"Eternity Code," Artemis corrected distractedly. "I created an Eternity Code?" He sounded doubtful.

"That's what he said. Something about you having to have made up a completely new language in order for it to work."

"It's not just making up a new language," he disputed, frowning. "If it were that easy, people would have been creating Codes for years now; just base it around Klingon or Elvish or what have you and work with it. Or you could attempt to revive any one of several languages currently dying out - Ayapa Zoque or Ter Sami, to name a few - and simply use that culture instead. Even now, there exist languages of bygone centuries that we haven't a clue how to read – the language in the Voynich Manuscript being a more extreme example – and would be perfect to base a secret code around. It is not getting an unknown language that is the difficult part of it; it's the transference of that language into a computer program. Because any words, data, is broken down into streams of ones and zeros, any language could be reverse-engineered from that data and discovered, if not deciphered.

"What makes an Eternity Code impossible is that not only must you have a near-unknown language to work with, you also have to be able to create an entirely new way of translating that language into code," he said as he leaned forward, one hand rubbing his brow. "I am smart, Jon, but I know for a fact that I am not capable of such a thing."

"But you _did-_"

"My 'friends', Jon. Whoever assisted me in retrieving it, or whomever I was assisting in retrieving it – perhaps they helped me create it. Perhaps I stole it from them. But for whatever reason, it is clear that we worked together in order to get it back." His fingers idly brushed at his hairline, pale fingers batting at ebony locks. "Their technology can create Eternity Codes…"

"They speak some unknown language, then?" Spiro asked.

"They would have to. Or they would have to know of one, or create one out of the blue, which is also not impossible. They have the technology to make an Eternity Code work, as well as completely wipe all traces of their existence from the minds of those who had contact with them. These are an advanced people, Jon – decades in the future of anything we have in the world now."

Spiro chuckled a little and shook his head ruefully. Artemis raised an eyebrow in question. "Nothing," he said with a dismissive wave, "it's just – I said almost the exact same thing when you first showed me the C-Cube."

"Amusing," Artemis replied blandly. "So the mysterious third party is on a scale above me, comparable to me as I am regularly compared to the rest of the population. I would say I'm humbled, but I am not a humble person, and I do not take challenges to my intellect well."

He breathed in, slowly, then out again several times before abruptly standing up, forcing his plastic chair back noisily. Juliet stood as well, a shadow of his movements that would have almost gone unnoticed had she been with less aware company. "Jon, you have given me a great deal to think about. Unfortunately, even I have limits on how many world-changing discoveries and paradigm shifts I can go through in one day, and as such I do believe it is time to take my leave." He attempted to brush out the creases in his commoner blue jeans, but to no avail, as he continued, "I will attempt to stay in contact with you, if that is not presumptuous."

"No way you're cutting me out of this,_ Al_," Spiro replied with a smirk, getting to his feet much more slowly that his guests.

"A further visit is impractical in the next few months, I should think, but simple phone calls should be fine. I would be able to make it a secure connection without much of a problem, as I assume normally the lines are watched." He extended a hand towards Juliet and she instantly produced a pen and small rectangle of paper. He scribbled down a short series of numbers before tearing it from the sheet and returning the materials. He extended the paper towards Spiro and said, "This is the number you should call; it will get you in contact with one of my associates, and they will transfer you to me.

"It would be helpful of you to spend the next week or so thinking of every detail you can of what transpired between us. You gave me a fairly competent summary today, but there is far more that you remember than you think you do. Any of it could be vital to my situation."

"Not much else to do around here," Spiro responded, taking the phone number and folding it into the jumpsuit pocket. "I suppose you want the number destroyed once I memorize it."

"Naturally. As soon as possible."

"Okay, then." And he extended an open hand. "It's good to be doing business with you, Mr. Lee."

Artemis smiled thinly and shook. "As with you, Mr. Spiro. And should you happen to be inexplicably moved to a different facility of significantly-less security within the next few months…"

"I'll just take it as a happy coincidence."

With one last firm pump of his hand, Artemis broke the handshake began walking back towards the group of guards by the entrance. "Come, Seina. I think we've bothered Mr. Spiro enough for today." Juliet gave Spiro one more silent, searching look before turning away and following her charge out of the Visitor's Room and out of the building.

* * *

So, over a year. How's everyone been? I've been shore-stationed, so it looks like I won't be floating in the Big Blue Wet Thing for the next few years. So I can't really pull legit excuses out of my arse, but whatever. I'm just glad I finally got this out. I think everything went a little quickly (even though it was 3,000 words more than my usual amount) and that it ended kinda fast (I think I used the word 'abruptly', like, eight times), but all-in-all I think it turned out okay. Did a fair share of actual research on prisons and things; wanted to get it right.

Performed another bit of expositional elaboration too, this time for the Eternity Code. Not a real thing, by the way - I checked. And I wanted to explain it a bit, so I had to expand a bit on the wimpy description we got from Book 3. Hope it turned out okay. And for reference, those languages - Ter Sami and Ayapa Zoque - had about ten speakers in the world at the start of the 21st century; as of 2011, we're down to 2 for each tongue. And the two Mexicans who speak Ayapa don't much like to talk to each other, so that language is pretty much gonna die if someone doesn't get on that. As for the Voynich Manuscript...well, that's some crazy shit. It's an ancient book written in what is presumably a lost ancient language, only no one (NO ONE) knows what in hell it says. Check them out on Cracked dot com(because everything I learned, I learned on Cracked dot com).

~ 30CK / troutpeoples

P.S. I just realized that my story summary kind of makes it sound like you're about to read some wacky sort of humor!fic. Any suggestions on fixing that? Cheers.


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